


High D'Haran Love Poetry

by Alsike



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Bath Houses, Classics, Dom/sub, F/F, Languages, Latin, Literacy, Poetry, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-05
Updated: 2012-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-30 16:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alsike/pseuds/Alsike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do Mord'Sith fall in love? In a society where emotion is weakness and affection is signaled by pain, love is the ultimate rebellion. - A Berdine/Raina first time fic, set in the TV universe, with poetry by Catullus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Poem 51

**Author's Note:**

> All translations are mine (I apologize for them). Look at the originals and more poems [Here.](http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/l51.htm)

#    


“You’re a… strange Mord’Sith.”

Berdine glanced up from her books.  There was someone in the library with her, someone she didn’t recognize.  Well, she was a sister, petite, dark haired, her casual brown leather fitting her form like a glove.  She must be one of the Mord’Sith who had been called down to the People’s Palace for the coronation of Lord Rahl.

“I think,” Berdine said, musingly, distracted by the flicker of amusement in the woman’s dark eyes.  “That much time is wasted repeating the same mistakes.  Just like reconnaissance, research provides knowledge, and knowledge provides power.”

The woman arched an eyebrow.  She leaned over and peered at the text Berdine had been perusing before she had drawn attention to herself.

“And this?  It contains knowledge that provides power?”

Berdine glanced down at the page and smiled slightly to herself.  Perhaps she had been caught out.  “Mmm, knowledge that provides… pleasure, at least.”

“Indeed?”  The woman hoisted herself onto the desk and crossed her legs.  “Enlighten me.”

It was a challenge, but it was a teasing one.  “It’s in High D’Haran.”

“A loose translation will suffice.”

Berdine looked at her, the dark eyes in the dark complexion, her intense interest.  And it was different that she was a stranger.  With all the Mord’Sith who lived in the palace, there was a hierarchy, challenged and rewritten with breaking and battle almost daily, but she had no knowledge of this woman’s rank in comparison to hers, just the knowledge of her easy confidence, and something that was not quite respect, but almost as unfamiliar.

“If you wish.”  She glanced down.  She knew the poem well enough she hardly had to read the words.  It was… pleasure reading.  “He, to me, seems equal to a god,” she began.  There was a short noise of derision from her audience, she ignored it and continued.  “He, if it is not blasphemy, surpasses the gods.  He, who is always sitting across from you, watching, and listening to your sweet laughter.  Pity me, because all of this rips my senses from me.  For when I look at you, at that very moment, nothing is left of me.”

She glanced up.  The woman’s eyes were intent, face slack, _listening._

“My tongue is struck motionless, a fine flame burns through my limbs.  My ears ring with their own sound, and both eyes go dim as if by night.”  Berdine looked up again, breaking the woman’s attention with a smile.  “And then the recipient replies.” 

The woman cocked her head, looking a little confused, but not speaking. 

“Leisure,” Berdine read, her tone a little sharper, letting her amusement show through.  “Is troublesome to you.  You exult in it too much, and are far too eager for it.  Leisure has, at one time, destroyed both kings and cities.”

The woman on the desk tipped her head back and laughed.  “I’m sorry for the poet,” she said, when she had finished.  “His lady love did not appreciate his work.”

“Maybe,” Berdine replied.  “But perhaps their love was the better for her getting down off the pedestal.”

“Perhaps.”  The woman slipped off the desk, landing lightly on her feet.  “Well, I will leave you to your search for knowledge, sister.”

Berdine nodded, but she didn’t look away as woman in her clean brown leather moved to the door.  Her dark braid, as thick as Berdine’s wrist, swung with the motion of her walk, but it wasn’t quite the stalk of a Mord’Sith on the attack, a little too much swing to the hips.  Berdine wondered, just momentarily, what she would look like with the thick black waves of her hair loose and falling down her back. 

At the door, closing it gently behind her, the woman glanced back.  She met Berdine’s evaluating gaze, and defended with a small smile.

“I hope you haven’t let that love poetry get into your head,” she remarked, and Berdine gaped at the accusation.

“Just- just an intellectual exercise,” she managed, barely without stuttering.

“Of course,” the woman replied, with a grin and an amused flick of her eyebrows.  She shut the door behind her, and Berdine was alone in the library again.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes rolling up to the ceiling.  “Master Rahl guide me,” she muttered, and squeezed the handle of her Agiel.  Still, she grinned absently at the molded bust of Alric Rahl above the bookshelves, the encounter held some potential for a more prurient sequel at least.

A few days later she was called to report to the Lord Rahl.  On the threshold, she froze.  The woman was there, red leather this time, standing at attention, listening intently to every word that came from their master’s mouth.  But she wasn’t _listening_ , the way she had before, to the words behind the words.  And Berdine knew she should not have noticed that, she should not have cared.

“Ah, my dear bookworm, Mistress Berdine!”  The Lord Rahl greeted her and called her in.  She looked to him as she entered, but she could not control the small flicker of her gaze to his companion.  The woman was watching her, her expression still, but her eyes had changed from obedience to amusement.  Berdine was never sure why people were so amused by the antics of this Lord Rahl.  But, perhaps it was not his undignified remarks that entertained her.  She seemed to be the sort to be more pleased by the thoughts going through her own head.  “Oh,” the Lord Rahl said, with surprise exaggerated enough that it seemed fake, “Have you not yet been introduced to Mistress Raina of the Basilisk Squadron?”

Mistress Raina gave her a long look, the corners of her lips quirking delicately.  “Mistress Berdine,” she said.

Berdine opened her mouth to reply, and found she couldn’t.  She could only look, as Raina’s expression grew more amused, and Lord Rahl’s presence was forgotten, and struggle to try and regain control.  “Mistress Raina,” she managed, nearly biting her own tongue in vengeance.  “We met, but… were not introduced.”

Intellectual exercises be _dammed_!

 


	2. Poem 2b

There was a certain… _generosity,_ in being a Mord’Sith, Berdine thought, on occasion.  Or at least, there ought to be.  Mord’Sith wasn’t merely a name or a title, it was a culture, tightly wound and as fully fledged as any that filled a whole country, rather than just a temple.  And it was a culture built from giving.  The gift of pain, of submission, of breaking, was, if carried out well, the gift of strength.  It was freedom from the petty sins of character women were so prone to.  And it was a gift of power, power over oneself and one’s own pain, which was the necessary requirement for gaining power over anyone else.

 

She enjoyed seeing Mord’Sith from other temples, how the ritualized training created people who were the same and yet different.  They did their best to systematize the training.  As much ink had been spilt on the subject as blood had been spilt in experimentation.  Hunger, loneliness, desperation: these were the spiked mallet that lightened the meat.  Then you made the girls believe in their potential, showed them the violence in their souls, and then you tortured them, to make certain that they knew who was the master, who could give them the strength they longed for. 

 

Only girls from lower-middle-class, two-parent families were supposed to be taken.  It was said that they only took the kindest, gentlest girls, but it wasn’t as if they planned that.  No one snuck through the forest and deposited a wounded kitten on the girl’s path, and only if she gasped in horror, and quickly picked up the kitten, took its home and splinted its leg, would they take her to be a Mord’Sith.  That would be embarrassing.  But the recruiters did have their eye out for a certain kind of girl.  They wanted whole children.  Ones that had lost parents or had been poor and starving, they were already a little hard.  They knew what sort of things life had in store, and that kind of girl would always be unpredictable when broken.

 

Some would give up and let themselves die.  Life held no promise that made suffering through this torture worthwhile.  Others found a core of strength inside, and would come out more violent, more angry, and more vicious than others.  As soon as possible they would re-break their mistresses.  They did not always answer to hierarchy or to loyalty, and because of that, they were dangerous. 

 

Berdine was one of those.  She hadn’t bothered to re-break her mistress, because she had known that her mistress was stupid in comparison to her.  She hadn’t expressed herself with violence, because for her, violence had never been the path to power.  She could use it, of course, and it was refreshing, a release, using her strength, feeling the speed that she could attain only at the peak of physical development, enjoying the hot caress of a spurt of blood from a severed artery.  But for her, power had always been the ability to see what others didn’t, and know what they needed to know and could not discover for themselves.

 

Cara, on the other hand, was a perfect specimen of the Mord’Sith machine.  She had been a soft child who had broken beautifully, and reformed herself into someone who rejoiced in her strength and anger, and found fulfillment in the path of the Mord’Sith, such fulfillment that Berdine wondered if, for her at least, the temples were aptly named.  She was fierce and loyal, but not a plotter, and she considered those who were to be lesser Mord’Sith.  A real Mord’Sith would be satisfied with becoming a more skillful warrior or breaking those who displeased them.  Unfortunately, Cara’s strength, and…. Berdine would almost call it… purity, meant that she was surrounded by plotters, sniveling females like Dahlia and Triana, who spit sugared poison in her ear, and tried to find a way to use her as leverage in their little games. 

 

In the futile hope of protecting her from her inevitable abuse at their hands, Berdine had offered Cara her alliance, but although Cara did not like plotters, she was even more suspicious of Berdine.  She did not know what to make of her, particularly since Berdine’s status was so mysterious.  She did not command a quad, nor have any title or rank among the Mord’Sith, and yet, her mistress was clearly afraid of her, and she had the ear of the Lord Rahl.  She was not very much like any other Mord’Sith.  Eventually Cara had decided that she would do her best to fix this problem, and offered to train with her, or train her if that was preferred, and Berdine took what she could get.

 

Berdine had been bathing, leisurely soaking in the warm water after training all morning with Cara, enjoying having driven her smug face into the ground more than a few times, when she had seen Mistress Raina come in.  She had been dressed in blood red leather, more red than usual because there was still fresh blood spattered across it, and to the knee she was covered in a fine layer of dust from the road.  Berdine had looked up with the hope of seeing her enter into the bath, but something even more interesting occurred.

 

“Mera,” Raina said, her voice firm but not excessively loud or pleading.  It was a commanding tone.  Berdine approved.  Although Raina had only recently come down from the mountains, Berdine had already decided that she was neither a plotter nor a fool.  She was a leader, aggressive and competent, leading her quad and advising the command of her whole squadron.  In a way, Berdine thought that she was more of a soldier than any Mord’Sith she had so far seen.

 

One of the new girls, who had come in with Raina’s squadron, looked up, brow furrowed, and got out of the bath.

 

“Mistress Raina-“

 

But before she was on the top step, Raina had drawn her agiel and in one smooth gesture, struck the girl across the face with it.  She cried out, foolishly unprepared for the strike, and fell on the steps.  Raina stepped towards her, right into the bath, and pressed her agiel to the base of Mera’s neck.

 

“Tell me what this is for,” she said, her voice so quiet that Berdine could barely make out the words.

 

“What are you-“

 

“Tell me what it’s _for_.”  She pressed harder, and the scream of the agiel echoed off of the marble walls.

 

“I- I-“ the girl gasped.  “I was distracted on watch.  I failed to protect my quad.”

 

“You did.”  Raina lifted the agiel and caught the girl by her unbraided hair.  She dragged her across the marble floors to a block that served as a seat beside the fountain.  She threw the naked Mord’Sith across the block and gave her a sharp kick to the side of the face, then she tapped her agiel in the center of her spine.  The girl clenched the marble, clearly in pain.  “You are without discipline,” Raina said softly.  “How many hours do you think it will take to break you of this?”

 

“I’m sorry,” the girl said lifting her head.  “I have no excuse.  I-“

 

“Hours,” Raina repeated, her agiel pressing against the back of the girl’s skull.  Her head fell forward quickly.

 

“No more than a day,” she said, desperately.

 

Raina frowned.  “A day then,” she said.  “But I’m busy.  I will give you twenty-four hours of my attention, but only when I have time to spare.  Until those hours are finished, you will be the guest of the breaking room.  Go there immediately.”  She gave her an impatient shove off the marble bench with her foot.  The girl scrambled up, and hurriedly, attempting, and failing to maintain her dignity, scurried out of the bath.  She seemed agitated enough that Berdine supposed she would run naked all the way there. 

 

Raina ignored the eyes on her after the girl had departed, and her shoulders sank slightly.  She wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of blood on her cheek, and then she turned to go.  Berdine slipped out of the bath and moved through one of the back exits into the portico.  She walked quickly, but carefully, making sure to appear relaxed and unbothered, and made it to the exit in time.  She caught Raina as she stepped into the apodytare. 

 

“No chance to bathe?”

 

Raina looked up at her, and on recognition, smiled.  Her eyes drifted southward for a moment and lingered, but only absently.  “Afraid not.  And as you can see, my schedule has just had another weight added to it.”

 

“Yes,” it was worthwhile, she supposed.  Passing the girl off onto someone else would only put them in danger, broken again or killed was the only real solution for such a lack of discipline.  “It was… admirable.  And clearly necessary.”

 

“All the brats get sent to me.”

 

Berdine smiled, teasing.  “To such a good soldier.”

 

“And now this soldier must make another report to the Lord Rahl,” she sighed, “I’m always the one to tell him when there is bad news.”  Her words were dry, and she sounded bored, but Berdine wondered if anyone else noticed that she was so clearly tired.  As Raina started to move away, Berdine laughed, and reached out to catch her arm.

 

“Not like that.”

 

Raina looked at her, puzzled, and Berdine advanced with the sponge she had borrowed from the baths and rubbed it across her face.  “Wha-“ Raina tried to ask, but the passing sponge muffled her interrogation.

 

“Although I’m certain he will admire your valor, going to see the Lord Rahl with blood smeared on your face is just slightly too casual.”  She proceeded to scrub the woman’s face clean, Raina spluttering, and attempting to fend her off in protest.  “Gloves.”  Berdine snagged each paw out of the air as it half-heartedly tried to elude her and wiped them down, front and back.  “Well, you’re vaguely presentable now.”  She said, and went to tidy a loosened strand of hair back into her braid.  Raina caught her hand before she could, and held it firmly out of the way as she fixed it herself.

 

“Thank you for worrying,” she said, an arch of an eyebrow making her words more mocking than appreciative.  “But stop it,” she said, released Berdine’s hand, and turned to leave.

 

Berdine squeezed the sponge absently, as she watched her go, ignoring the pink water that dribbled on the floor.  She had offended her.  Interesting.

_It is as pleasing to me as, they say,_

_to that swift girl was the golden apple,_

_which loosened her long-bound girdle._

 

 


	3. Poem 92

# 

An excess of curiosity, Berdine knew well, was her primary failing.  She had heard it too many times, generally on the wrong end of an Agiel, but somehow no one had managed to break her of it yet.  And it was clearly inappropriate, and a bad idea, but she could not help but gravitate to the breaking room, listening for Mera’s screams, and hoping just to catch sight of that small lithe form, wielding a whip.

 

Raina didn’t use her agiels when she broke someone.  That was interesting.  She preferred the lash and a simple knife.  She was not a creative sadist (not like Denna, who Berdine had spent not a few instructive hours observing and being practiced upon, and on whom she had learned to identify the expression of slightly maddened inspiration.) but she was careful, never making a cut in anger or frustration, balancing the threat with the example.  Just pain was vile, but the expectation of pain, particularly a kind of pain you had already experienced once and desperately desired to never experience again, that was what broke someone.  You could only break someone by turning her own mind against her.

 

Berdine leaned against the grate and lost herself in the flex of muscles, the crack of the whip, and the weakened whimpers of someone so close to breaking.  Raina had stripped down to the waist, her leather too hot in the steaming dungeon, and the spatters of her blood speckled dark against the muted sepia of her skin.

 

Raina spoke softly when she addressed Mera, and Mera only murmured in response.  Her face was showing the lines of lingering pain, but her eyelids drooped and her lips barely moved.  She had left the bargaining stage behind.  Berdine was glad of that, although it was always interesting to see their minds work, pretending to be more broken, begging, promising anything.  She remembered that time.  She had felt brilliant, ingenious, coming up with the most convincing pleas, the most silver-tongued promises, and she had been mystified why none of them worked.  But of course they didn’t work.  Any Mord’Sith knew they were coming.  That was what those torturing for information didn’t understand.  Torture made you desperate.  Of course you would tell the truth, but you would come up with anything, make up what you believed your torturer wanted to hear.  But once someone was broken, they would always tell the truth.  The trick was to push past the begging, past the despair, even past the plateau of catatonia, and then wreck them, kill them, as most Mord’Sith did.  That was when you turned your hand, no longer bludgeoning with your knuckles, but caressing with your palm.  You had to bring them back, make them love you.

 

That was what Raina was doing now.  She stepped closer, reaching out to cup Mera’s face, and Mera pressed her cheek into her palm.  Her eyes were closed, and Berdine could see the breath release from her chest, all the tension drop away, and the devotion, so obvious, on her face.  Raina stepped up on the edge of the well and kissed her, just soft, and necessary, and if Berdine closed her eyes she could almost taste it: the complete giving over of oneself, and the acknowledgement of surrender.

 

Mera went limp in her bonds, her face slack, likely unconscious, and Raina turned away, stepping off the well cradle and moving towards the trough.  She washed her face and hands in the icy flow, and then sponged the blood off her bare upper body.  A trickle of pink water ran down her skin, following the lines of her musculature that was cut into her flesh like marble.  Berdine watched as the sponge slowly dropped back into the trough, and Raina’s gaze lifted to the cold stone wall, seeing through it, looking at nothing.

 

It was her face that sent a shot of worry through Berdine, the exhaustion.  Where was the joy of breaking?  Was it really so mundane that her other worries surpassed it?  Or was she just… too close to being broken herself, not by anyone, but by life?  She looked nothing like the teasing, confident interloper in her library.  It felt utterly wrong, like a failed rhyme in an otherwise perfect pattern.

 

Raina was about to turn away.

 

“That was beautiful,” Berdine said softly, and the tired Mord’Sith whirled at hearing her.

 

“What?” Raina flinched on recognition.  “What are _you_ doing here?”

 

“I was interested.”

 

Raina scowled, her expression ugly, as she started to leave again.

 

“You didn’t even touch your agiel, did you?”

 

“You’re interested in my _technique_?”

 

Berdine shrugged.  “You handle a whip well.  But you know that.”

 

“It’s a skill.  I have had _enough_ practice.”  Raina shook her head.  “Stop this.  I neither like not return your interest.”

 

Berdine smiled.  “Mi dicit semper male.”

 

The words seemed to whip up a fury in Raina.  Her lip curled and her eyes were hot coals.  “I’ve had enough of this!  If you persist-“

 

“Don’t you want to know what it means?”

 

“All your words are poison!  I’m here for now and I will do my job, but I then I will go _back_ to the mountains, happily.  There at least I am free of your poems and your politics!”

 

Berdine was always aware of the struggles and power games that filled the free time of her so-called superiors, and she recognized the bitterness as well, caught between two forces, strained beyond all measure, always on your guard.  It would drain the reserves of anyone, particularly if what she had said before was correct, that Raina was the one to give the report when plans failed.  She was the one to break an improperly trained child.  And she did not love it, not in the way she should.

 

“You’re like me, aren’t you?” Berdine said, amused by the goal her thoughts had led her to.

 

“I wouldn’t make such a claim with so little basis,” Raina snapped back.

 

“You’re a soldier,” Berdine continued, playing with the words on her tongue.  “You do what must be done, but only that.  You take little pleasure in breaking, and none in politics.”

 

“I take _plenty_ of pleasure in breaking,” Raina’s eyes were like curses.  “And it is beyond time someone should have taken a whip to you.”

 

“But you’re not from the machine.  Neither am I.  My parents were dead long before Lord Rahl gave me to the Mord’Sith.  They say my initial breaking failed to be perfectly complete.”  Berdine grinned.  “I enjoy proving them correct.”

 

Raina looked at her, right in the face, black eyes furious and glowing.  “My breaking is no concern of yours.”

 

“No, of course not.”  Berdine shrugged.  “Just, intellectual curiosity again.”

 

Raina looked at her, her expression half disgusted, and she turned away, moving towards the exit to the breaking room.  But she stopped before she reached the threshold, and turned back.  She looked bitter and exasperated.  “Your intellectual curiosity is a bit of a nasty trick, isn’t it?”

 

“It is what it is.”

 

“Do you think you will have power over me if you find out about my breaking?”

 

Berdine considered this.  She hadn’t thought about it before.  “I think I will have more power over myself,” she said musingly.  “I will understand more about Mord’Sith, how they are made, and what that process makes them into.  I will learn what kind of spirits are broken poorly, into weak shells of themselves, and which ones are broken out of their shells, become something better than they were before. 

 

“I think you are someone who can do that, who can break someone, and make them whole.  Some mistresses merely expose the base elements of someone’s character, because that is all they are.  Their reality is selfish and bitter and violent, and that is all they can teach the naked hatchling in front of them.  You are more than that.  But perhaps that is why you are tasked with the second breaking.”

 

“You think it’s an honor?”  Raina laughed, but not with amusement.

 

“A responsibility.”

 

“Yes,” Raina replied flatly.  “It is clear you lack experience with those.  Try them for yourself sometime.  I find they’re often more beneficial than… intellectual curiosity.”

 

*            *            *

 

Berdine was always aware of the games, but it was Hally who explained this one.

 

“The bitch from the mountains thinks she’s good enough to command,” she snorted, her mouth red from the undercooked meat she carelessly devoured.  “Mistress Catha is amused and running her ragged, but she has some good people.  She should stop playing.  Just down her and split up the squads.  We’d all benefit from that.”

 

Hally was a good soldier, utterly fearless.  Her words were never reliable except about fighting matters.  “They have good people?”

 

Hally gave a nod, tearing off another bite with her teeth.  “I’ve been working with a few of the squads.  There are always fool kids.  A breaking doesn’t make a girl a soldier.  But they’ve been trained well.  Got a new one today.  I was warned about her, that she was lazy.  Haven’t seen a sign of it though.  Fucking intense, really.”

 

Berdine cocked her head, letting a small smile cross her features.  “Not Mistress Mera, by any chance?”

 

Hally snorted.  “Should have known you’d be up on it.  Any good gossip?”

 

Berdine shrugged.  “She _was_ lazy,” she said.  “I guess she’s grown out of it.”

 

*            *            *

 

The Lord Rahl had his plans and the Mord’Sith would carry them out.  At least that was how it was supposed to go.  Getting the Lord Rahl, the heads of the Dragon Corps, and the highest ranked Mord’Sith and their attendants together in one room was a bit like starving all the predators in the People’s Palace Zoo and putting them together in one cage.  The fallout was nasty.  Although Berdine had no rank she was always expected to be there, as the Lord Rahl appreciated her advice.  Berdine made sure it was always about the Great Deeds of his Ancestors, even if technically some of the anecdotal guidance given was, well, original.

 

Raina was there too, head bowed as she stood at the side of a fox-haired woman in red leather, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Mistress Catha, completely disregarding the vengeful looks she was getting from every lower ranked Mord’Sith in the room.

 

Berdine internally shook her head.  Hally was one of the most liberal minded Mord’Sith.  Berdine doubted that any other would bother to wonder whether any of the new arrivals were worth having around before classing them as enemies and doing everything they could get away with to make their stay here overflow with suffering.  And Raina stood at that woman’s shoulder.

 

Berdine had very little clout, but she had respect, and she would use that.  She refocused on the Lord Rahl and applied herself to his desires.

 

After reminding everyone else that she knew in detail things they had barely heard whispered, and reaffirming the fact that she would not bow down for anyone save the Lord Rahl, she left the arguing commanders to make whatever decisions they would.  She waited, leaning against a column, until the meeting ended, and the differing groups departed in their respective directions.  Raina passed, and she fell into step beside her.  She didn’t say anything, just felt Raina cast a glance over her, betraying nothing.

 

“They’re sending a quad out,” Raina suddenly offered, speaking quietly, as if it were casual and she didn’t quite believe it at the same time.  “And some scouts.  Crossing the border, to the south, thanks to your advice.”

 

“Not your quad?”

 

Raina snorted.  “Too important to have a heard of trainee elephants trampling around.  My brats need a bit more work before they’re ready for actual reconnaissance.”

 

“Mera is a model soldier now, I hear.”

 

If she hadn’t been paying attention, Berdine would not have noticed Raina swallow.  But then she smiled, a little cruel, more resigned.  “Her old companions are complaining.  She’s no fun now, prefers training to sex.”

 

Berdine laughed quietly.  “Does she really?”

 

“She’s come to me twice, begging for the touch of my agiel.”  Raina shook her head.  “Breaking doesn’t _fix_ people.  She needs the reminder, the pain burning away her weakness of character, her indolence and childishness.  We don’t punish indolence here, not if you have the strength to avoid it, but we should.  If you cannot trust your sisters to put away themselves, put aside their petty arguments, when we are at war, we might as well be squawking hens in a barnyard.”

 

“It feels like such sometimes,” Berdine said dryly, meaning every word.

 

Raina gave an involuntary noise that was almost a laugh.  She put her hand on the doorjamb where the hallway split in two directions, leaning against it.  She looked away, but the flex of a smile was visible in her cheek.  “It does.”  She shook her head.  “I have places to be.”

 

Berdine nodded, acknowledging her decision, and permitting it at the same time.

 

But Raina stopped before she turned down the other hallway and glanced back, wearing something that was almost a smile.  “I wasn’t taken by the Mord’Sith,” she said, and Berdine blinked in incomprehension.  “I volunteered.”

_She always speaks badly to me, and is never silent about me._

_I will perish unless she loves me._

_What do I mean?  Because there is just as much from me:  insulting her_

_assiduously.  And yet, in truth, I will perish, unless I love._

 


	4. Poem 99 (excerpt)

“Volunteer?”  Hally snapped.  “No one fucking volunteers for the Mord’Sith.  It would be like- like-“ She scowled.  “Volunteering to become a baneling or something!”

“I don’t know,” said Cara, consideringly.  “We do have the reputation of never accepting volunteers, but why wouldn’t someone want to become one of us?  We eradicate weakness.  We have power, and magic.  We’re well fed,” she added, eyeing the mess in front of Hally.

“You’d sign up for recreational torture just for food?”  Hally raised an eyebrow.

“Well, some people might,” Cara said, rolling her eyes pointedly.

“Recreational torture?”

“People volunteer for the D’Haran army, even for the Dragon Corps trainee squad.  They torture you as well, just in groups, while we prefer to have a more personal connection with our tormentor.”

“But you’ve never heard of anyone volunteering to become Mord’Sith?” asked Berdine, again.

“Not unless you count the ‘don’t take my child, take me instead’ one, which isn’t exactly _voluntary_ ,” Hally replied.

Berdine nodded.  “I thought not.”

“It would ruin our image,” said Cara.  “Can you imagine it?  Little girls lining up to become Mord’Sith?  ‘Oh yes.  We heard we get to play with kitties!’”

*            *            *

“How does one _volunteer_ to become Mord’Sith?”  Berdine asked, leaning against the wooden palisade of the training ground.

Raina twisted, stepping in and applying her agiel to her student’s waist as the girl glanced up, distracted by the comment.  She blocked a stroke from the second girl and wiped sweat from her forehead.  “How does a Mord’Sith become a _librarian_?”

And she engaged again.

“I prefer historian,” Berdine replied.  “You, taller one,” she called out one of the students.  “Stop tensing your shoulder before you strike.  Think of your arm as a snake.  Just _strike._ ” __

The girl looked at her, expression worried, and took an agiel to the gut.  Her arm snapped out in repost, and Raina caught it on the leather guard, flicking it away.

“Better,” Berdine said.  “Slightly.”

“I think you’re being more distracting than helpful,” Raina informed her, stepped behind her student and brought her elbow around, nailing the girl in the sternum.  She staggered, tripped on Raina’s foot, and crumpled to the sand.  The second girl, the taller one, tensed unhappily, likely more afraid of embarrassing herself than pain.  Raina made an easy, nearly mocking pass, and the girl blocked it, looking shocked at her own move and almost joyful, and her shoulder was horrendously tensed.  She had barely started moving towards a riposte when Raina was up close, breast to corset, and had her agiel pressed to the soft skin under her jaw.  Her eyes rolled back and she fell.

Raina sighed, and turned around, wiping off her forehead.  The hot D’Haran sun made the sand of the training pit glow white.  Berdine grinned.  She was such a dark little thing, dark eyes, dark complexion, dark hair, sleek and compact like a desert pony.  She looked like the old D’Harans had, the ones from the mountains to the northeast, and the deserts beyond them.

“If anyone could have volunteered for the Mord’Sith, I believe it would be you.”

Raina laughed at her, and looked up, lips parting, perhaps to make a comment, perhaps not.  Berdine would never know, because with a quick step, and a move like a cobra striking, she pressed a light kiss against her lips.

And for a moment it _was_.  Berdine could taste the sunwarmed skin, the salt of her sweat, heard the surprised catch of her breath, and then there was a sudden rush of movement, and she almost couldn’t bring herself to counter it, step away, and deflect the force of the blow.  But the blow was nothing to watching Raina stumble back, looking at her in horror, as if she had done something unspeakably vile, like proclaimed loyalty to the Mother Confessor, or suggested regicide.

“What was that?” Raina snapped, rubbing the back of her hand across her mouth.  But she knew what it was, and Berdine knew as well, and knew down to her bones that she shouldn’t have done it.  But even more so, she shouldn’t have wanted to.  “Get _away_ from me!  Leave me _alone_!”

Berdine didn’t move, but she didn’t have to.  Mistress Raina shoved past her and stormed down the passage, away from such _commictae spurca saliva lupae_.

 

_I stole from you, while playing, honey-sweet young one,_

_A sweet and tender kiss, as sweet as ambrosia._

_But I didn’t get away with it: for far longer than our lips touched_

_I remember hanging from the highest cross,_

_While I pleaded myself to you, and not even with tears_

_Could I soothe any of your savagery._

_For in the same moment that it happened,_

_From your lips, cleansed by much weeping,_

_You wiped it off, with all your fingers,_

_Lest anything whatsoever of my mouth still dishonored you,_

_As if it were the infected spit of a filthy prostitute._

…

_Such punishment I received for miserable love,_

_Never again will I steal a kiss._

 


	5. Poem 8

# 

Kissing was not something that Mord’Sith did, really.  Certainly they performed lip-to-lip contact, although the gentlest version was usually the breath of life.  It could be a greeting between a Mistress and her pet.  It was a short, ritualized communication, which named the Mistress as dominant, and the pet as submitting to that dominance and possession.  In more complicated relationships, it was a challenge, a battle to engage in.

 

It was never gentle.  Even affection, among Mord’Sith, was always cruel.  And Berdine knew that she should only ever desire to taste blood in a kiss.  But that wasn’t all there was.  Perhaps it was the fault of too many books, but the breadth of experience a Mord’Sith was allowed was so cruelly curtailed.  They were told that their strength came from hate, and so they hated everyone.  They hated each other nearly as much as they hated their enemies.  And that was their greatest weakness.  They were loyal to the Lord Rahl, but they hated him too.  But truly it was their lack of loyalty to each other that left them vulnerable and alone.  The strongest quads were the ones who had formed bonds, even if that bond was a result of knowing that as a group they could kill better than anyone else.  That could inspire a certain alliance, a certain friendship, Berdine would say, if that word was not forbidden for Mord’Sith to even think.

 

She had just wanted a kiss, just wanted to share her admiration and unexpected affection, to honestly say that Mistress Raina was worthy of much honor, that she deserved to take pride in her abilities, that she was beautiful.  But that was not something a Mord’Sith was allowed to say.

 

“Mistress…”  Raina’s voice.

 

She heard a laugh in response, and Berdine tipped her head, knowing that staying would be far more masochistic than her usual limit.

 

“My pretty pet.”

 

Berdine stayed, and listened to the whine of the agiel, the soft little gasps and whimpers that Raina made, and the pleas she begged at her Mistress’ behest.

 

Even limping, her body marked, Raina walked out of that room, jaw set, stubborn and fierce as always.  Berdine sat on the ledge outside and considered letting her go past, leaving her pride intact.  But when did she ever submit to someone’s _pride?_

 

“Did you get to come?”

 

Raina whirled on her, hand on her agiel, her expression contorted into fury.  “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

 

“Listening.”

 

“Pervert.”

 

Berdine shrugged.  “I didn’t say it gave me any pleasure.”

 

Raina flinched at those words.  “What would give you pleasure?  You being the one to hold the agiel?”

 

Berdine frowned.  “I’m not interested in your pain.”

 

Raina’s lip curled.  “It’s always _interest_ with you.  Is that all you have, nothing but pure _interest_ , careless, cruel, scientific _interest_?”

 

Berdine watched her.  “Perhaps it would be easier if that were true.”

 

Raina’s shoulders drooped.  Her eyes narrowed.  “You lust after me.”

 

“Why should that frighten you?”  Berdine cocked her head.  “Isn’t lust the one emotion a Mord’Sith is encouraged to have?”

 

“I don’t understand what you _want_!  Do you want to break me?”  She spread her arms, as if to offer up her injured wounded body.  “Just do it if that’s what you want!  Take me!  Don’t force me to hang in limbo like this!”

 

“I’m interested in what you are, not what I could make you.”

 

Raina looked disgusted and frustrated with her inability to understand.  “It doesn’t _work_ like that.  Not here.  You take me to be broken, or I take you.  One of us has to serve.”

 

“Is that enough for you?”

 

Raina stepped back, stunned to silence by the question.  Her face twisted, the burn of fury in her face and straightening her injured back and twisted shoulders.  She was angry, angry with everything, with Berdine, but with her own weakness and suffering as well.  “Nothing _means_ anything here!”  she screamed.  “I can get on my knees for you, just like I do for my Mistress, I can call those girls who love me because I hurt them and spread myself over their bodies, all desperate, all obligated, and it means nothing.  I feel nothing.  I am Mord’Sith.  And you can’t change that just by wishing.”

 

Berdine slid off the ledge, stepping towards her, reaching out.  But Raina jerked away from her hand and lashed out, knocking it away.

 

“Don’t touch me.”  And she was gone.

 

*            *            *

 

“You’re being an idiot,” Cara told her, blandly.

 

Berdine didn’t really disagree.  But it wasn’t as if she could draw her eyes away from the lines of her face, the curve of her mouth, the proud angle of her chin.  And to a certain extent, she didn’t want to.  Perhaps it was curiosity.  Curiosity killed the Mord’Sith.  “I want her.”

 

“Then just _take_ her.  Stop making this so difficult for yourself!”

 

“I could,” Berdine said softly, half to herself.  But she wouldn’t.  She knew that, without having to question it.  She told the truth when Raina asked.  She wasn’t interested in her pain, and that was all Mord’Sith knew how to take.

 

Her own mistress had enjoyed playing with her before she had been broken, had enjoyed shaming her, mocking her, asking if her father would have been horrified to see his little girl doing such things, disgusted with her for finding pleasure in them, having pleasure wrenched out of her body.

 

Berdine had taken the shattered pieces of herself and sealed them back together like sand into glass.  But she had never let herself care about that part.  That had been a sign of her mistress’ weakness, assuming that Berdine could be hurt by _shame_.  She knew what shame was.  Shame was nothing but words, nothing but the lies the world told you.  And her father would have cried to see what was happening to her, but he was dead, and you couldn’t blame the dead for their impotence.

 

But these feelings, the ones that were not about taking, were wrong and unhealthy.  Whatever she was, she was Mord’Sith first, and Mord’Sith knew better than to let themselves become corrupted like this.  Even if she was right, even if looking past the blindness of the Mord’Sith was worth doing, the woman didn’t want her.  And she had no idea how to reach out and _give_.

 

*            *            *

 

Berdine found her after the bath, her hair half undone, a lush mass, heartless black against the tan of her shoulder, and she hovered in the doorway and watched as Raina twisted the wet strands into their accustomed tight braid.  But even still and silent Raina felt her eyes and turned, flinching at the sight of her, a moment of open bruising in her eyes before it was flushed out by hard irritation.

 

Berdine waved.

 

“Why are you still doing this?” Raina snapped.  “I thought you would have gotten bored by now, but you’re still following me around, speaking to me, as if-“  She looked furious.  “You’re acting like not a Mord’Sith.”

 

The words were calculated to enrage.  Cara would have flown at her, agiel out, for such an insult to her honor.  Berdine just considered her, a small smile on her face.  “Break me of it?”

 

Raina froze, comprehension slow.  “You-“  She took a step towards her and lashed out, a fist connecting with Berdine’s face, her head snapping to the side.  “How dare you even ask me that?” 

 

Berdine looked back, the throb of her cheekbone only adding to the tension in her body.  She had to ask though.  She knew it was foolish and dangerous to have this sort of obsession, and she needed breaking, but there was no one else who could do it. 

 

“I am _just_ a soldier from the backwoods.  I train lazy brats and washouts.  I am handed all the shit that drifts to the bottom, and I _deal_ with it.  I don’t have the _right_ to break you.”

 

“I asked you to.”

 

Raina’s eyes widened, and it wasn’t a kiss, but there was a tight clench in Berdine’s chest as she _hoped_ when she shouldn’t, and saw the desire written on her face.

 

*            *            *

 

Berdine was stretched and hanging from the chains, bare and bound.  Her body was marked heavily, the cut of the whip that Raina wielded with enviable skill had left cuts and welts that were purpling into bruises.  She knew Raina could break a person without even touching her agiel, she had seen her do it, but somehow she knew this wasn’t going to work.  It wouldn’t change anything.  If Raina broke her she would be just as obsessed, just as weak and devoted.  It would be worse. 

 

It was strange somehow, how breaking was so much like confession.  Confession was even more horrific, because it destroyed the will entirely, not just bent it to another’s desires.  You could overcome your breaking, break your mistress, but you could never overcome confession.  This breaking, Berdine feared, was far more like confession than it ought to be.

 

“You’re thinking something again, aren’t you?” Raina said, frowning fiercely.  The cool steel of a knife touched the back of her neck.  “Haven’t I taught you to stop that by now?”  She moved around her, stepping up onto the ring around the shallow drain that Berdine dangled over.  The tip of the knife pressed into the hollow at the base of her throat.

_I was just thinking about you_ , she didn’t say, _about the beautiful way you wield a whip, about that fire in your eyes when your pet resists you.  But saying that… you would be even more beautifully angry._

 

“Nunc iam illa non vult.”

 

Raina froze as the words slipped from Berdine’s bruised tongue and bloodied mouth.  “What?”

 

Berdine managed a small smile.  “Now she desires you not, and you, powerless, do not wish for more.  Do not chase her, nor live in misery.  Harden your mind, endure.”

 

“Stop it.”  Raina pressed closer, the knife breaking her skin, a single drop of blood trickling down the center of her chest.  Her hand reached for her agiel, and Berdine tried to move her head closer to her, wanting to just brush against the sleek drawn-back hair.  But they were too far apart.

 

“Goodbye sweetheart, I will endure this.  I will not seek you out, nor beg your company against your will.”

 

“I told you to _stop._ ”  Raina shoved the agiel into her stomach, and Berdine gave a small grunt of pain, but it was lessened by the way Raina did not look away from her eyes and her lips.  Her actions were vicious, but she hardly paid attention to the thrust of the agiel.  It was a reflex, anger, when there was something that you could not dominate, could not control.

 

“But who will come to you now?” she whispered through the pain.  “Whose will people say you are?  Who will you kiss?  Whose lips will you bite?”

 

Raina jerked the agiel away, letting out a repressed scream of rage and frustration.

 

“But I am resolute.  I will stand fast.”

 

And Raina caught her firmly by the back of the neck, jerking her forward, and met her lips with a bruising kiss.  She kissed like fire, overwhelming and furious, and she bit, and Berdine knew that she was falling apart.  “Shut up,” she hissed, breath buzzing between them.  And then she sealed her lips once more, teeth and tongue wounding the already injured flesh, and Berdine let her in, and was broken and unbroken at the same time.

 

*            *            *

 

_Miserable Catullus, cease your folly,_

_and what you see is lost, regard as lost._

_Once the sun shone brightly on you,_

_when you came often to where the girl led,_

_she who was loved by us as none will ever be loved._

_Then and there occurred many joys,_

_which you wanted and your girl didn’t not want._

_Truly the sun shone brightly on you._

_Now she desires you not, and you, powerless, wish not for more._

_Do not chase her, nor live in misery,_

_Harden your mind, endure._

_Goodbye, sweetheart. Catullus now stands fast:_

_he will not seek you out, nor beg your company against your will._

_But you will be sorry when no one asks for you._

_Villain, poor you! What remains in your life?_

_Who will come to you now? Who will think you beautiful?_

_Who will you love now? Whose will people say you are?_

_Who will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite?_

_But you, Catullus, be resolute and endure._


	6. Poem 70

# 

Raina’s hands slid over her body, cupping her skin, pressing against the bruises and welts, and Berdine bit back the whimper at the pain, and the heat of her mouth as it pressed against her throat.

“Don’t say those things to me.”  The breath of her voice was hot on her skin.  “They aren’t your words.  They are things that are old and dead and gone, and we can not bring them back.”

“But I have no others,” Berdine whispered, half to the ceiling.  “They come to my lips and trip off my tongue because they have been the only way I have had to feel.  Hitherto, they were only words, as if I had been told about the pain of an agiel with out ever experiencing it.”

Raina pulled away from her, and it was as if the breath had been stolen from her body.  “Don’t- don’t tell me that.”  She stepped back and looked, her eyes taking in the vicious black mark from the agiel on Berdine’s stomach.  “I can’t believe in impossible things.”

And then she was gone, and Berdine swung slowly, the lingering warmth making her injuries sting.

*            *            *

Berdine was in the library again, purportedly doing research for the Lord Rahl, in actuality sketching in the margins of her notes.  If the lines formed the shape of lips, the curve of a tensed arm drawing back a lash, she did not think too deeply about it.

“You’re always here.”

“It’s kind of my job.”

But she turned, allowing herself to take in the sight she did not allow herself to wish to see.  Raina did not seem confident as she had before.  She looked around as if seeing the books for the first time, her mouth a little slack, almost seeming threatened and afraid.  But that was an impossible thing.

Berdine rose and moved towards her.  She felt like a half-broken child, unable to hide her pleasure that her Mistress had sought out her company, unable to deny her anything, except the self-possession that she demanded.  She smiled, and her smile only broadened when Raina looked irritated and disapproving.  “Have you come to keep me company?  Or for a book?  I’m sure our Lord would forgive me a few minutes break if you had any other requests.”

“You would consider my request to be of higher importance than the Lord Rahl’s?”

Berdine shrugged.  “I can’t say I’m making much progress as it is.  The Sabine Annals of High D’Hara is not my favorite.  Have you read any of it?”

Raina stiffened.  “No.”

“Lucky.  My first tutor decided that it would be both morally and educationally beneficial for me.  I much preferred Verm’s Res Historica.  Verm, at least, has a sense of-“

“Stop it!”

Berdine stopped.  She hadn’t expected that response.  Going off about various historians couldn’t count as flirting even for her.  “Yes, Mistress.”

Raina flinched.  “Don’t say that.”

And she was a tangled little puzzle.  Berdine stepped forward, and failing to consider it thoroughly, she reached out to curl her fingers around Raina’s upper arm.  “Is there anything you desire from me?”

Raina looked up, eyes wide for a moment, before she jerked away, backpedaling into a defensive stance.  There was fury in her face that was irresistible.  “How am I supposed to love you?” 

Berdine stepped back, stunned.  She had never used that word, though it blared like a siren in her mind. 

“I don’t know what to _say_ when you’re around.  You’re always watching, smiling, as if you can see how helpless I am.  And it’s my fault.  I know it is.  I came to you.  I wanted to see whether the rumors could be true, whether there really was a Mord’Sith who believed in stories.  But you’re worse.  You’re a Mord’Sith who believes in love.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?  You can’t help being _affected_.  It’s your job.  But it isn’t mine.”  Raina’s face was flat, her jaw set, her eyes hard.  She looked like she was walking into a battle she had no hope of winning.  “I cannot train it out of you, that’s clear enough.  But I cannot return your feelings.  They do not exist for me.”

“No feelings at all?”  It wasn’t a challenge really, just a casual, resigned question.  A formal rejection, Berdine sighed.  She _must_ have been annoying.

“Envy, perhaps.  Frustration.”  Raina’s mouth was tight.  “I’m not about to claim that I’m not attracted to you.  But that really doesn’t have anything to do with this, does it?”

Berdine nodded.  “It doesn’t.”

“But I’m not interested in owning you.  I’m not interested in your pain.”  She smiled tightly, recognizing the repetition of Berdine’s own words.  “Nor am I interested in being your pet, even if you were inclined to take me.  Associating with you is nothing but troublesome for me.  I would appreciate it if you would stop... whatever this is.”

“If it is troublesome to you, I will do my best to stop.”  Berdine dipped her head, and unthinkingly, she gestured that Raina could depart.  Raina obeyed without a word, turning her back on the books with a peculiar tension, and fled.

Berdine turned away from the door, taking a small volume off the shelf and opening it randomly.  She hadn’t meant to command her to leave.  But they could playact a change in status all they wanted.  It didn’t make a difference in the end.  Whatever it was that she wanted, it was impossible.  Better to nip off the bud and dig out the roots.

The poem that fell under her eye...

 

_“None,” my woman says, would she rather marry than me,_

_Not even if the Creator herself asked,_

_She says this, but what a woman says to a passionate lover,_

_Should be written in the wind and swift-running water._

 

Berdine almost laughed.


	7. Poem 15

Cara frowned, striding down the hall at her side, her steps as amusingly large as always, dramatic, to make up for her lack of height.  “You know, I haven’t even met this girl you’re lusting over.”

Berdine shook her head.  “You don’t need to.  She’s in a completely different area than you, and either way, I’ve given up.”

Hally spun to face them.  “ _You_?  You’ve given up?  You don’t give up.  You just make sneaky plans.”

Berdine smiled and shook her head.  “I think... I think I’m just going to wait.”

“Oh,” Hally looked bored.  “You do have a plan.”

“Honestly, I don’t.  But I’ve done everything I can, and probably more than I should.  It’s her turn.”

Cara scowled.  “What is going on in her head?  Why would she say no to you?”

“Well, she volunteered for the Mord’Sith.  She must be nuts.”

“I really wouldn’t blame her for this,” Berdine interjected before they took it upon themselves to knock some sense into Raina.  “I’m sure I asked for far more than either of you would be comfortable with.”  Cara’s eyes were sharp and suspicious.  “And I might have forced her to listen to more poetry than is technically humane.”

“Oh Lord,” Hally mumbled.  “No wonder.”

*            *            *

Rahl sat back in his throne.  He was bored, clearly, only half paying attention to the chancellors who gathered around, reporting their troubles, overstating their needs, and undervaluing their tax revenues. 

Berdine was unimpressed.  Usually she did a much better job of focusing at these events.  But Raina had been there when she came in, and for all her easy words, she was still unsettled by the slight glance, eyes flicking to the door, and then, just as quickly, flicking back.  She didn’t turn her head.  And she didn’t change her expression.  Berdine didn’t sigh.  That would have been inappropriate.

Rahl’s meetings with his chancellors were always long and dull.  Berdine, by dint of her rank and office, had the right to speak whenever there was a point of historical relevance or precedent to comment on.  But usually the only other Mord’Sith, besides the heads who along with the Captain of the Dragon Corps served as military advisors, were bodyguards.

Raina was neither a bodyguard nor a head Mistress.  She was with the fox-haired woman again, standing just behind her shoulder.  That upstart from the mountains had still not given up her fight to become the head, though Mistress Catha, also in attendance, was ignoring her, irritated and just as bored as Berdine.  Her interest was sparked for a moment when it became clear that one of the provinces would need subduing.  Along with the Captain she proposed a solution, and two quads were assigned.

But it didn’t make sense.  There was no reason for Raina to be there.  She didn’t speak.  She didn’t look at the maps or the notes.  But, Berdine considered, she was often called in to report to the Lord Rahl, even if, as she claimed, it was only when there was bad news.  She was familiar here, to an extent.  Perhaps she had been asked to attend.

One of the chancellors was claiming an absurdly low grain yield, and Berdine cut him off.  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have her own informants among their retinues, but she had to be subtle.  “That’s unexpected,” she started.  “The weather this year has been just the sort grain requires, hasn’t it?  And your usual yield is nearly twice-“

Rahl, eyelids lowered in laziness, let his gaze drift around the room.  They settled on Raina, and just slightly, carelessly, he smiled.

Berdine forgot what she was saying.  Mouth slack, suddenly bewildered, blindsided and angry.  It couldn’t be true.  Raina wasn’t the right type, was she?  She was straightforward, and strong, all duty and practicality.  She wouldn’t be attractive to _him_ , not with his fetish for wide eyes and fair hair.  But perhaps… she was small, the delicacy of her shoulders hiding her strength.  She didn’t play games, and the bitterness of machination wasn’t written on her face.  Perfect mouth, perfect eyes, eyes that looked down and couldn’t hide their sorrow, or looked up and saw everything you wished to conceal.  And Berdine tried not to choke on the bitter hatred that welled up, like blood from a mortal wound.  Everyone was watching her, surprised and amused by her stumbling.  The Lord Rahl laughed, his tone mocking.  She found her words, speaking cold and clear.  “You had twice that much with worse weather and fewer fields.”

“But the workers have been restless-“

Berdine slashed out with perfectly sharpened words.  “You’re blaming this on them?  Are your farmers just idiots, forgetting to sow the seeds?  Or have you gotten better prices trading with the Midlands, traitor?”

Lord Rahl grinned maliciously.  “Be nice, Berdine.  We’re all fools compared to you.”

“No,” Berdine said.  “Not all of you.”  She hadn’t meant him.

He knew, and he shook his head, still smiling with a wicked tone.  “Captain,” he indicated the master of the Dragon Corps.  “It seems that this chancellor is having difficulty keeping track of his grain.  Send a regiment with him when he returns back.  I’m sure they’ll keep track of where it’s going.”  He smiled at the Chancellor who was looking pale and uncomfortable.  “And their food and payment will come out of your crop.  Better find that missing grain.”  He waved them all away.  “Begone,” he said.  “I’m bored.”

Berdine took a moment to collect herself and only left after most of the others had slipped out.

“What’s wrong with you?”  Raina’s hand was pressed firmly against her neck guard.  She looked intent and accusatory, and Berdine was furious.  How dare she accost her like this?  She had come out of nowhere, taken her off guard, and that was shame enough. 

Berdine caught those small perfect shoulders, stepping in to throw her.  Raina turned against the force and slipped out of her grasp, hurling a backhand towards her face.  Berdine caught her wrist in midair, and wanted to break it.  Her fingers made dents in the leather.  But she couldn’t twist; she couldn’t look away.

“If I bruise your face-  I’ll beat you ‘till he doesn’t-“

Raina flinched back.  “You’re jealous?” she sounded horrified.

Berdine was disgusted with herself.  Possession would always be denied her, and yet she wanted nothing more.  “Yes.”  But it was more than that.  It wasn’t even mostly jealousy.  It was fear, and hate, and regret.  Pretty girls with pretty eyes, and even if she shouldn’t, she couldn’t help but care.

“I’m not yours, and even if I were your pet, you would still have no rights here.”

“I _know_ that.”  There was nothing she could do.  No way to change this, and it was a bitter taste in her mouth, but not one she was unfamiliar with.  You always gave your toys up when the Lord Rahl asked for them.  But she could not help the jealousy, when she knew Rahl would never ask for anything worthwhile, but if he did, no one could refuse.  And Raina was so good at refusing her, over and over again.

“I can’t love you.”

“Why not!”  Berdine shook her.  “It’s not the same as ‘don’t.’”

Raina jerked out of her grip.  “Because it makes you _weak_.”

“Why does everyone say that?”  Cara spouted it daily, but she had her own reasons, and Berdine couldn’t blame her.  But this wasn’t the same. She wanted to stomp out her frustration.  This was purposeless.  “It doesn’t make us weak.  We are _not_ better without it.”

Raina’s eyes narrowed, a single eyebrow informing her that she was not being a good sample case. 

“It makes you crazy, fine, of course it makes you crazy.  But you don’t believe it.  The way you treat your students-“

Raina looked like she had been hit by an unseen blow.  “I hurt them, that’s all I do.”

“For their own good.  They are better for it.  You’ve said it yourself, if we cannot trust each other…”

“This isn’t the same thing.”  ‘ _This_ ,’ it was almost ‘what we have,’ and if it had been, then there would have been something, some reason for this, not just _feelings_ , without reason without cause without resolution.  But it was only ‘ _this_.’

“Fine.  It’s true.  But what we are told is a lie!”  Berdine could not hear that slander one more time.  Why did people believe that their limited experience, that the lies they have been told, were all there is, were the only way to think or look or live?  “We are told over and over again that we are woman and women are weak, so to become strong we must no longer be women, but we can never be _men_.  Men have hearts, but a woman must cut out her heart to be worthy of power.  But they tell us this and they leave us broken.  Without love we are only petty and sly and vicious.  We are sisters of the agiel, but we are the worst kind of sisters.  We are sisters in pain, in violence, in jealousy, not in trust, loyalty, and support.  We could be so much stronger than we are.  But they are too afraid of us to allow us that strength.  We are broken and purged of our weaknesses, but denied the dreams that could make us stronger.”

Raina looked away.  “I don’t disagree.”

“We have been lied to.  We are told to think not on love or friendship and cast aside our families.  But when we castaside all ties to this world, all that remains is selfishness, madness, and Lord Rahl.”

“Isn’t he enough?”  Raina shook her head.  “Mord’Sith aren’t like regular soldiers.  We don’t desert.  We don’t hesitate.  To a certain extent we could improve, we could work better as quads.  But if there’s nothing to choose over service, over our Lord and our country, there’s nothing holding us back.  We have our lives, we are fed and clothed and kept warm.  If all we have to pay is duty to one man, only one man, the price is cheap.  If he is all we care for, then we have no obligation to anyone else.   Our lord is enough to give us purpose, and there is no one else to hold us back.”

“How can that be enough?”  But Raina was a better Mord’Sith than her.  She couldn’t help that it felt like a loss.  “When we’re just broken, perhaps.  But after that we need more to give us strength.  We should turn to each other, become sisters, not rivals.  But we cannot trust our agemates, and we cannot love our mistresses.  And the youngest and prettiest are taken to serve the Lord Rahl and discover that they are _nothing_ to him.”  And she could only think of Cara, just broken, surprised at being so honored, when everyone who could see her hurt eyes and expressive lips would know, immediately, that she was the sort the Lord Rahl would love to take to his bed.  The consequences had shaped her.  Berdine had watched her rage and fury as she revolted at her weakness, at the vulnerability of the body she had been born into, a body made to give life, not take it.  She had embraced being Mord’Sith as the corrupt embraced the purifying fire.  “You cannot love someone who does not love you back.”

Raina’s eyes were stricken, and Berdine realized too late the accusation in her words.  She stood frozen, gaze fixed on Raina’s guilt and shame.

“Why did you come to the library?” Berdine finally asked.  “Why did you come to see the Mord’Sith who believed in stories?”

“I was afraid.”  It was simple, and succinct, and nothing a Mord’Sith would ever admit.  “I was afraid of you, afraid that there could be a great Mord’Sith who would be forever far beyond my reach.  I was afraid enough, coming to the People’s Palace, that the Mord’Sith I would find here would be different, better than any of my cohort.  I had heard rumors of you, how you stood at the Lord Rahl’s left shoulder and told him what to do and he did it, that you did not need to fight for your place, because no one would dare to challenge you.  You epitomized all I feared coming here.  You were everything I could never become, never compete with.”  Raina’s mouth curled up into a tight smile.  “And I always face my greatest fear first.  So I went to the library.  I didn’t realize what I should truly fear, that you would love me.  I was never taught how to fight against that.”

“Why?” Berdine asked.  “Why was I something you could never become nor compete with?”

Raina flushed, cringing in humiliation.  She turned, starting a desperate plunge away down the hall, but Berdine grabbed her wrist, halting her.

“Why?”

Raina turned back, her eyes reflective, jaw set, as if it could be armor.  She shrugged, stiffly, as if it was painful.  “I never learned to read.”

Berdine blinked.  It seemed absurd.  This was D’Hara, not some backwards place like Westland.  “Even when you were a child?”

“I _told_ you.”  Raina jerked her arm away.  “Do you really think someone who would _volunteer_ to become Mord’Sith would have had the kind of life that involved school or parents?  I was a thief.”  She shook her head, her shoulders slumping with remembered suffering.  “I wished I was a thief.  I was a beggar.  I stole when I could.  I was beaten when I was caught.  I raged in anger against those who had more than they needed and those who had abandoned me to my fate.  And then the women in red leather came.”

Berdine had never seen that look on anyone’s face when speaking of Mord’Sith, it was hope, and half-destroyed faith.  And it was so obvious what they had meant to her.

“They were strong, and healthy, and well fed.  They took what they wanted, and everyone was too afraid to hurt them for it.  And they were taking girls.  I cleaned up as much as I could, and I strode up to them.  ‘Take me,’ I said.  _Take me_.”  Her eyes were wild, not seeing this half enclosed hallway in the People’s Palace, not seeing anything but the tall straight forms of Mord’Sith, hunting children, and shining with admiration for them. 

“I wanted to scream it, I was so desperate to not be left behind, not in this crumbling mountain hamlet, where I starved and froze and begged until they chased me out of town and I would starve on the road until I found the next one.  But they laughed.  They ignored me.  So I snuck into the wagon anyways and stole food, despising the girls that cried and whimpered around me.  They caught me thieving and threw me out of the wagon, onto the stones by the side of the road.  The one who had tossed me out pulled her agiel, and would have killed me, but my Mistress stopped her.  She said, 'Don't.  The brittle ones are so much more fun to break.'  And they took me.  I will never regret it.  But once I was Mord’Sith, once I was their equal, how could I ask to be taught what any child should know?  I could not betray my weakness.”

“It’s not a weakness,” Berdine whispered involuntarily.  “Not for you.”  And it was true; she knew that from the deep clench in her chest.  There was nothing about this woman of fire and iron that could ever be counted as weak.  “I can teach you.”

“No!”  Raina backed away.  “Why must I always confess myself to you?

“It’s nothing to me!  And if it’s worth something to you, I don’t care.  I’m not interested in having power over you, in making you owe me.  Let me serve you.”  Berdine kept pace with her, knowing that aggression was not how she should get what she wanted, but this was the only way she could think of.  She reached out, catching Raina’s wrist again, holding it, not to hurt nor halt this time, just to hold.  She waited for Raina to strike her.  She needed to be hit.  If she were hit she could submit and apologize for her insolence.  She could make it better, and not be left standing here, shaking, when she needed to have more time with this woman, and Raina needed something from her, but would not take it.  But Raina didn’t hit her.  She just stood, her back pressed against the wall, gaze cast down, like a pet, and Berdine could not bear seeing that in her face.

She dropped to her knees, tugged Raina’s wrist and placed her hand on her head.  “Command me to do it.  I will do this for you.  I would do anything for you.”

“I didn’t break you.”

“You didn’t _have_ to.  Just say yes.  I promise, to steal no more kisses, to not pursue you when you don’t want me if you say yes.  I would be honored to do this for you.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s you.”

“Why me?”

Berdine allowed herself to look up, take in the wide eyes and symmetrical perfection of her face.  “I don’t know.  How can anyone know?  Perhaps I was fated to love you, that is all the sense I can make of it.”  Raina shut her eyes, as if praying to the Creator to make it untrue.  “But… it is you.  And you have only shown yourself worthy, shown your strength, your prowess, your honor, and how can I not see you, see that you are everything that is Mord’Sith and that I respect, and that you are more than you ought to be, that you are a soldier, that you care enough to break your charges so they can find their strength, that you have open ears and eyes, and want to see, and that you are fearless.”

“I am not.”

Berdine pushed up off her knees and pressed a chaste kiss firm against her mouth.  “You are fearless enough for me.”

*            *            *

She hadn’t said yes, but she hadn’t said no either, just left, and Berdine was willing to wait.  The Lord Rahl had gone to the north on a hunting expedition, and she could let her hate subside.  It didn’t mean her long-distance devotions weren’t slightly more bitter than usual.

_I commend to you myself and my loved ones,_

_Aurelius.  I beg a modest favor,_

_That if there is anything beloved of your heart_

_That you would seek to keep pure and unharmed,_

_Then chastely keep my boy safe for me._

_I’m not saying ‘from people’_

_There’s nothing we fear from the ones_

_Now here, now there on the street,_

_Going about in accordance with their business._

_The truth is, what I fear is you and your cock,_

_Molesting boys, both good and bad._

_And any which please you,_

_It is pleased to poke however much you wish,_

_When out, it is ready._

_It is just this one boy that I humbly take away._

_And if your evil mind and frenzied passion_

_Urge you, just enough, to commit such a crime, you wretch,_

_That by treachery you would attack our person._

_Then it is your fate that will be miserable and vile!_

_Hogtied and ass open,_

_You’ll get fucked with horseradish and fish._


	8. Poem 85

# 

Raina appeared in the library like the mist, hanging around in the corner, looking ready to dissipate at any moment.  Berdine flinched and then restrained herself.  This would be a bit like coaxing a cat down from a tree.  She could handle scratches, but she didn’t want to scare her off.

“Come on,” she said, not looking at her, just waving her over.  “You can sit down.  No one’s going to catch you here.”  Finally she turned and looked at Raina, flashing her a wry smile.  “No one ever really comes here, save you.  It’s been nice to have a visitor.”

“I shouldn’t be here.”

Berdine stood and pointed to the chair.  “Sit,” she instructed, and Raina obeyed.  The way she was sitting was almost Cara-level sullenness, but her expression was pure Mord’Sith.  She hadn’t really seen that expression on Raina before, except for at the few meetings with Lord Rahl, and even then, Berdine’s mere presence was usually enough to spoil it.  Sometimes she wondered if that was the reason she hadn’t given up on this, because of the way Raina’s eyes had laughed at her, when she had forgotten her own name in the Lord Rahl’s presence.  And it was the wrong expression for learning reading.  This was not going to work if she expected it to be like training.  Being punished for failure really wasn’t effective.  And she didn’t want Raina to submit to her, to not question her.  That wasn’t how this should be, and she wouldn’t allow it.  She had to change the tone.

Berdine swung herself up to sit on the desk in front of her student and cocked her head.  Beyond the Mord’Sith mask the abject misery, desperation, and hope were clouding Raina’s pretty eyes, and Berdine hurt for her.  “So,” she started, keeping it easy.  “What do you know about sounds?”

Raina looked suspicious.

“Basically, D’Haran uses thirty sounds to make words, and it has nineteen letters to represent those sounds.  So what it does is it classes some of the sounds that are related as the same, and uses a single letter to represent them.”

“What?  Why don’t they just have thirty letters?”  And that was the expression Berdine had wanted to see, the open one, irritated and confused, but listening.  If she thought about it, that had probably started this whole mess, Raina was beautiful when she was listening, and Berdine never could resist an audience.

“Historical reasons, and phonological.  Some of the sounds are underlyingly the same, but are produced differently based on their position in the word.”

Raina stared at her. “Are you _serious_?”

“It could be worse.  D’Haran, at least, is essentially phonetic.”

“What does that even mean?”  She was frustrated and disdainful at the same time, and Berdine couldn’t help the smile.  It was probably good to stop her before she got into the complicated history of spelling reforms, and their orthographic system as compared to the one of the Midlands, because honestly, D’Haran and most of the languages of the Midlands were all descended from the same source, and to some extent were mutually intelligible.  But the Midlands council could never agree on anything, and their orthographic conventions were a mess.  If they had just maintained the original spellings, then fine, it would at least have been etymologically helpful, but no, various nobles would institute a reform that would promote their particular dialectical differences, which would last for enough years to confuse everyone about spelling, and then there would be a new movement, to change things back, or to put in a new reform, and each land had their own conventions.  To some extent, Berdine felt sorry for the Confessors, because reading documents from those subsidiaries must be an awful headache.  (Not that Confessors were immune from spelling idiocy: who on earth used an ‘h’ to mark a diphthong?  ‘Kahlan,’ honestly.)  For this sort of thing, she would take a tyrant over a council any day.

“Nothing, just that it could be worse.”  She leaned forward, reaching out to touch her lips.  Raina’s eyes widened, but she didn’t flinch away.  “Tell me a sound that uses your lips.”

“What?”

“Any words that start with a kiss?”

Raina jerked back.  “Are you mocking me?”

Berdine didn’t look away.  “No.  Say my name.  Pay attention to what your lips are doing.”

“B- Berdine?”  She looked confused and her skin darkened, and Berdine had to breathe in swiftly through her nose to keep control.

“Did you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

 _Feel_ _the kiss_ , she wanted to say, but she couldn’t.  It would be too much, to see her reaction to that.  “Did you feel your lips strike each other and release the sound?”

“I… yes.  I think so.”  Raina frowned, and mouthed a few sounds silently.  “Yes.”

Berdine smiled.  “So there are other sounds that use your lips, some just lips, others lips and teeth.  Fear, pet, vie, wait.  Can you tell the difference between those sounds?”

Raina scowled.  “Why is this important?”

“Trust me.”

Raina’s eyes narrowed even more and she frowned.  Berdine laughed and produced her chart with the images of the mouth explaining the positions of the sounds.  The letters were each matched with their appropriate picture.

“You’re probably right not to trust me.  You’re my first student.  I’m testing things out on you.”

Raina groaned and grabbed the chart.  “What is this?”

Berdine slid off the desk so she could lean over her shoulder and explain.

“Oh, so, I think I see.  If I see-” She pointed.  “that thing, I should…”

“This was why I was walking you through the sounds.  If you can feel where they’re produced and remember them, you can shape the right sound when you see the letter.”

“You have those marked as two different letters, but they’re the same position.”  Raina pointed and Berdine nodded.  Honestly, she was far too intelligent to have any trouble with something this basic, and too determined to let it slide.  This was going to be as simple as anything.  She placed her fingers against Raina’s throat.  “What are you-?”

“Say our Lord’s name.”

“What?  Lord Rahl.”

Berdine laughed.  “No, his given name.”

Raina’s eyes flicked suspiciously to her.  “Darken.”

“Did you feel my fingers vibrating against your throat?”

“I-  yes.”

“Now pretend his name was Tarken.”

“ _Tarken?_ ”  The inflection seemed to say, ‘who on earth would suggest a lousy name like that?’

“Do you hear the difference between the two?”

“Of course.”

“Do you feel the difference?”

“What?”

“Say them both, and pay attention to my fingers.  In which name do they start vibrating first?”

Raina frowned and tried to sort this out.  She said both names a few times and then stopped.  “Oh,” she said.  “It starts first in Darken, doesn’t it?”

“You’re really excellent at this.”

Raina rolled her eyes.  “You have no one to compare me to.”

“Even so.”  Berdine leaned close.  “The vibration is called voicing, and that’s what differentiates those letters.”

Berdine walked her through the chart until she could match the image to the shape of her mouth.  She glared seriously at the symbols and at the images, making the shapes, muddling and mistaking various letters, forgetting how to interpret the images, but in general making excellent steady progress.

“So now for vowels, they’re harder.”

Raina groaned.

Berdine had given a lot of thought as to how she wanted to teach this.  It wasn’t training, and she wasn’t going to be there, cracking the whip.  Raina didn’t need any whip cracking anyway.  She wanted this, more than anything.  Berdine’s intention was to give her the tools to have her set out on her own, so she could work alone, checking and doublechecking, and not have to ask for help.  It was pretty clear she didn’t like to ask for help.

After they covered the sounds, Berdine set her to muddling out short words, and went back to her own work.  They would do stress patterns the next day.

It was nice to have her around though, grumbling in annoyance over the similar looking letters and sounding out words.  Sometimes it was distractingly alluring, and Berdine would sit there, letting her eyes take in the sight of her.  And then Raina would look up, catch her eye, and scowl at her.  “Don’t you have work to do?”

Berdine felt just as much affection for her while she was teaching, but the desire was restrained, and she could keep herself under control.  She thought she could at least, but something unsettling in her stomach suggested that the affection she felt each day when Raina fought and scowled over the letters of the alphabet was only getting worse.  It felt different, more real, because she had spent so much time with her, learned so much about how she looked and behaved, and yet she was still completely absorbed in every new look and flinch.

Each day was a new trial, and each day Raina improved, forming the letters roughly and awkwardly, as she wrote out short brisk reports, her spelling wildly off at times, and yet phonetically sensitive.  Long sentences were a trial to read, because she still had to hold each decoded word in her head and combine them.  But fluency was practice, and Raina was dutiful.  She spent most of her time at her duty, training her students, but she would slip away for an hour or two, to sit across from Berdine, scowling at her papers, stretching the fingers unused to holding a pen.

Sometimes she would laugh, and Berdine found herself mesmerized by it.  She would look for simple texts, but interesting ones, her favorites, moving or funny, especially funny, and then she would wait, hardly working, for Raina to decode it, and to see her response.  And she wanted it.

But she had promised to steal no more kisses.  This was worth far more than a momentary brush of lips and an immediate rejection.  It was worth it, even as it ached like an infected wound.

“Here,” Berdine said, handing her a sheet with a small couplet written out.  “I bet you can read this now.”

She thought she could.  Raina was nothing if not studious, and she glared down the sheets of letters and combinations of sounds with ferocity that would make a living enemy flee in his tracks.

Raina bit her lip as she stared at the words, her throat and the underside of her jaw flexing slightly as she rehearsed the sounds without opening her mouth. 

“I hate and I love,” she said finally, pausing to find the words that matched the meaningless marks on the page.  “’Why do I do this?’ you ask.  I don’t know.”  It was more fluid now as she recognized words she had seen before, and grew interested in what came next.  That was the important part.  You’d never learn to read, Berdine knew, if you weren’t interested in what came next.  “But I feel it happening.”  She frowned at the last phrase, containing a word that was long and difficult, but as she worked it out it was undeniably familiar.  “And it tortures me.”

 

_Odi et amo.  Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?_

_Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior._


	9. Poem 50

# 

“You know, for the longest time, I was sure you were trying to make a fool of me.”

Berdine blinked up from her reading to where Raina was sitting on the desk, legs swinging, puzzling out a section of a translation of a classical play.  “What do you mean?”

“This is terrible.”  She held up the sheet.  “What on earth is going on with this woman’s weasels?  Does it really say, ‘and none of your weasels will fart less powerfully than you’?  And why are people hitting each other with...” she frowned at the words.  “Penis on a stick?”

Berdine laughed.   No one had ever said classical things were classy.  “That’s what it says.”

Raina glared.  “You always talk like it’s nothing, it’s like gossip, or camp jokes.  And it really _is_.  I wouldn’t have believed it before.”  She waved a hand at the books.  “It all looks so impressive, and it was something I had no access too.  It was like a mystery religion.”

“Most of those are gossip and dirty jokes too,” Berdine said.  “People are people.”

Raina frowned at her.  “I was so frightened of you.  And then you were acting like an idiot, and I was even more frightened.  But you weren’t just playing the fool.  You’re… not that much of a threat.”

“Not to you.”

“Hm.” 

Berdine went back to her reading, but there were eyes cutting through the leather on her back.  She waited.  There was rustling of paper and another small noise from Raina.

“Here it is.” 

Berdine listened. 

“’I’m not too eager, Rahl, to wish to please you.  Not even to know whether you are a white man or black.’”

Berdine smiled.  The translation didn’t really have the punch the original did, but it was still sly and intriguing, even with such clumsy words.  “I don’t recommend saying that one too loud.  It’s seditious.”

“And your favorite poet.”  Raina raised a sarcastic eyebrow.

Berdine grinned at her rude expression.  “I have dangerous taste.”

Raina scoffed, but didn’t disagree.  “But it’s not _that_ seditious, on the surface.  It’s just… snotty.  You said a little rich boy wrote it, and his friends probably all laughed.”

“They probably thought it meant ‘I’m not going to suck your cock, even to see how big it is, because you’re ugly.’”

Raina laughed, just a little burst like she couldn’t help it.  Then she shook her head and looked back at Berdine, eyes sly and seeing, seeing far more than they ought.  “But it doesn’t really make sense, the way it is, right?  He knows whether Rahl’s skin is white or black.  And, the way it’s structured, it seems like wanting to please him and knowing should be parallel.  It’s an epigram, epigrams are parallel.”

“Gold star.”

Raina glared.  “And white and black are omen colors, right?  So, what he’s really saying is, ‘I don’t want to serve you, Rahl.’”  She frowned, and looked up at the bust of Alric Rahl on the shelf near the ceiling, and almost addressed him with the next words.  “’Because I think you might be bringing death to us.’”

And that was a true interpretation, perfectly said.  “Yes,” Berdine looked away.  The epigram had been written long ago, back before the bond, before the Rahls held perfect sway.  And that was how far you had to look back before you could find such doubts.  All later ones had been suppressed.

“That’s like you.”  Raina said, crossing one leg over the other, stretching slightly, alluringly.

“What?”

“ _You’re_ not a threat like _this_ isn’t a threat.”  She waved the paper.  “It’s a joke.  It’s insolent.  It’s only a threat if you see what’s underneath.”

The words behind the words.  And Raina could hear the thoughts behind the thoughts.  Berdine sat back in her chair and watched her.  Raina looked half pleased and half suspicious.  She waited for a reaction, relaxed and ready, and intent, eyes open, and seeing her, really seeing her, not like others did, as just the shadowy outline of a threat, or a tangled whirlwind of confusing words and actions, too bewildering to make sense of.

“I think you’ve just given me a compliment.”

Raina groaned.  “I’m done now.  I have training.”  And she left.

*            *            *

“You’ve been spending too much time with her.  It’s interfering with your work.”

Berdine scowled at Cara as they headed down the hallway towards the mess.  “Who says that?  She’s assisting me.”

“ _Stupid_.”  Cara wrinkled her nose in a sneer.

“What?”

Cara caught her arm and jerked her into a side hall.  There she glowered.  “Don’t you understand?  Everyone knows that’s a lie.  Everyone knows that she’ll never be promoted higher than she is because she can’t use a journey book.  And she can’t use a journey book because she can’t _read_.  There’s no way she’s _assisting_ you in any other way but getting off.  And honestly, even Denna isn’t that insatiable.  What does she _do_ for you?  Rub her tongue all over your-”

“Shut up!”  Berdine hit her, and Cara, taken by surprise, crashed into the wall.  “Don’t speak of her like that.  I’m not lying, and I haven’t slept with her.”

Cara recovered slowly, staring at Berdine, her expression puzzled.  “You’re telling me that you haven’t slept with her?”

“I haven’t.”

“Why would you say that?  Even if it’s true, you shouldn’t...”  Cara closed her eyes.  “It’s true.”

“Of course it’s true.”  Berdine pressed her lips shut, looking down, knowing that it would sound like something to be ashamed of, but in truth she was far more ashamed of her inability to stop desiring her.  But she was not the one who had the right to choose.  She had made her offer, and that was all she could do.

“Why not!  You’ve been obsessed with her for... for months!”

Berdine stared at her hands.  “I don’t know how.”

Dead silence followed.  “You... don’t know _how_?”  Cara punched her arm as if trying to wake her up.  “I have first hand experience saying that you know how.”

Berdine looked at her, compact frame, sturdy shoulders, expression of utter incredulity.  She was not the girl who had needed a mistress, needed someone whose status was within reach, to let her fight again without being ground into the dirt when she lost.  She had needed to remember how to lose without losing everything.  It was an easy enough lesson to teach with sex, because even when you lost, you still halfway won.  “I don’t want it to be like that.  I don’t want to take her.”

Cara frowned.  “She doesn’t have the status to top you.”

“And she knows it.”  Berdine scowled and kept moving.  “And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

*            *            *

Berdine had made a promise, to steal no more kisses, but it was hard, harder than she had imagined.  The more time Raina spent in her library, leaving her image there, her scent, the echoes of her words and her laugh, the harder it became to forget her.

Berdine forgot her own work for one day, and spent it instead teaching poetry.  Metrics, rhymes, stresses, assonance, she made it a game, writing little insulting poems about various Mord’Sith of their acquaintance.  Raina had a flair for an insightfully cutting remark, and a good enough ear to put together a lay.  The time slipped away without Berdine noticing at all.

When Raina pushed herself up, saying she had to go, still happy and pleased over the last effort, Berdine had glanced to the window, and noticed in surprise how late it had gotten.

“I’m sorry for keeping you.”

Raina flashed a smile and shook her head.  “Don’t be.”  She dropped the quill on the table with a casual gesture, and Berdine pulled in air through her nose, keeping herself taut and under control.  She would not reach out.  She would not fall to her knees and beg for just a little more time, a little more closeness.

She could not let herself hate the way it felt, having to stay so far away.

 

_Yesterday, an idle day,_

_We played many games in my notebook,_

_Until we had become as ones addicted to pleasure,_

_Writing verses, and both of us_

_Playing with meter and measure, this measure and that,_

_Passing them back and forth amongst jokes and wine._

_And after I left your charm and your wit behind,_

_I began to burn,_

_so much so that neither food could help me,_

_nor sleep cover quietly my eyes,_

_But untamable, I was tossed and turned about on my bed,_

_by encompassing passionate love,_

_Longing to see the light of day,_

_so that I could speak with you,_

_and also so that I could be with you._

_But afterwards my limbs became exhausted by this labor,_

_Half dead, they lie ill in bed._

_Darling, this poem I made for you,_

_And please see through it my grief,_

_Now, beware of being bold, we beg you,_

_Beware of despising our request, darling,_

_Lest Nemesis claims a penalty from you._

_She is a violent goddess, beware of offending her._


	10. Poem 75

The Lord Rahl called Berdine in to his chambers when he returned from his hunting expedition.  He was lounging in his night robes, left open at the front and exposing his chest.  They were in his office, not his bedchamber, which meant little, but was, at the very least, a cause for hoping.  Berdine stood as stiff and as straight as she could, doing her best to exude disinterest and unattractiveness.  Usually she just told him the truth in as bland a way as possible.  If he respected her, he wasn’t interested.  But this time she had an uncomfortable suspicion that she would have to lie.

“I’ve heard some interesting things about how you’ve been spending your time while I’ve been away.”

Berdine looked him in the eye.  He always liked it when Mord’Sith looked him in the eye.  He especially liked it when they got on their knees soon afterward.  “Gossip?  After torture, gossip is the Mord’Sith’s favorite sport.”  Gossip of course was just another breed of torture.  The difference was academic.

“You  _are_  women.”  He laughed at his own joke.

“Of course, Lord Rahl.”

“But honestly, that little barbarian you’ve taken up with.  She’s pretty, of course, pretty enough that I considered taking her myself.”

Berdine pressed her lips together and made no other response.

“But she’s worthless.”  His voice was flat, as if it were obvious, as if it were self-evident.  Of course, because a good teacher was always worthless, because a person who could admit her fears and face them was worthless, because a person who worked harder than anyone to overcome her weaknesses was worthless.  The words roiled in her stomach and she wanted to spit them out, spit them all over him, show him how he was the one who was worthless, that his spineless little maneuverings, that his un-worked-for power, his ability to take strong women and chew them up and spit them out were worthless.

Wasn’t Cara worthless? She wanted to ask.  But you took her anyways.  You took her to bed and let her serve you, and then you cast her aside, and then, when she had suffered for you, suffered endlessly, you waved your hand and told your servant to kill the child, because he was worthless too.

“Can I not even take my pleasure where I wish?”

Lord Rahl laughed, amused at the roll of her eyes.  “Take your pleasure where you will, but be careful to not let it interfere with your work.”  His face changed.  “I will not allow women to interfere with my work, especially women who are and can only be nothing.”

Nothing?  Of course, Berdine, born with rank, born with the opportunity to use her strengths, clearly she was worth something, as long as she served the Lord Rahl well.  But Raina?  Delicate and dark and from the backlands, no of course she was nothing, of course no one would understand.

*            *            *

Berdine found her leaving the ring.  She found her on her own turf, not the library, nowhere where she held sway.  She could only beg for this, she could not demand it.

“I want you to train me.”  Raina looked over at her sharply.  “ _Please_.”

“Again?  Why?”

Berdine couldn’t look away, but she couldn’t breach this distance between them, and the distance was too far.  “I want you to touch me, and I want to be able to remember it.”

“Touch you with a weapon?”

“I want you to leave your marks on my skin.   _I need it,_  she didn’t want to say.   _I need to remember what you are.  I am so lost and alone without you._

“I don’t want to break you.”  The words were sad and just tired.  But it was ‘I don’t want to,’ not ‘I can’t.’

“You already have, without even trying.”

And Raina looked at her, and saw her.  She looked just like she listened.  She heard everything, even the words behind the words, and she saw everything, even the thoughts behind the thoughts, and Berdine would always,  _always_ , love her, even if it meant she had no secrets left.

“All right.”

*            *            *

Berdine’s shoulders ached.  Her body resented her mind for needing this, but she needed this.  And there had been long years where no one dared to touch her in this way.  No one could train Mistress Berdine, who stood by the left shoulder of Lord Rahl.  Oh they had hated her for it once.  They had hated that a child could rise so quickly.  Her age-mates had hated her for being better than they were, being more useful to the Lord Rahl, being stronger than her mistress, and they had caught her alone, bound her, and thrust an agiel into her mouth, blistering her lips and tongue, trying to take away the words that had won her her status.

But she had healed, and she had learned, and the next time they came for her, she was ready.  Two of them were dead now, and the rest knew better than to let themselves be seen by her.  And everyone knew that it was not worth it to try to train Mistress Berdine.

Raina didn’t use an agiel for this.  It was better that way.  The pain of an agiel was ugly, tainted by its source, tainted by its ease.  The electric scream that a knife left in its wake, the fire of a lash, the numbing bone aching bruise of a cosh, that pain was pure.  Raina’s hands were gentle and assured, moving over her to sooth the burn of a welt, only to set it on fire again.  But more than the slow methodical way she worked her body over, it was her eyes, and the deep banked heat of desire in them, that were the real providers of torture.

A long slow cut up the inside of her thigh, and Berdine let loose a small weak sound, that was almost pleasure, that  _was_  pleasure.  It ached and stung and throbbed like pleasure, and the cool blade of the knife against the heat of her body was a relief.

“Why do you want this?”

“Because it’s you.  I want everything from you,” she managed, at a whisper.

“Why do  _I_  want this?”  And Raina looked broken, and Berdine wanted to do nothing more than to slip her arms around her and draw her in, hold her.  But hanging from an iron chain by one’s wrists made that impossible.  She looked, and Raina’s eyes slid up, from the blood that soaked her own hand, and met her gaze, and there was a moment, where there was nothing but silence, and Berdine had no words.  There were no words for this.  And then there was the clatter of the knife hitting the stones, and Berdine blinked, and there was a hand, sliding up over her throat, cupping the back of her neck, and Raina’s form, slick leather pressing against her, and her  _mouth_.  The light nip of teeth on her lower lip, and then the warm brush of lips, sinking into it, mouths open…

 

 

 

“Fucking hell, Berdine!  If I have to give you the breath of life after  _this_ -”

Berdine regained consciousness slowly, her head fuzzy and unexpectedly… wet.  She was down on the bench near the water trough, and Raina was standing over her with a bucket.  She looked worried and upset, and it was kind of endearing.  Berdine managed to reach out, getting her fingers tangled in the laces at Raina’s hip and tugged her close.  Raina dropped to her knees in front of her.

“Honestly?  It was probably the blood loss, though I really don’t doubt you could kiss me to death.”

Raina laughed, and her eyes were wet, and she leaned in close, and Berdine accepted her kiss, and this time, stayed awake long enough to return it.

*            *            *

“You have a private room.”  Raina sounded annoyed, but Berdine was too pleased that she was there to worry about it.

“I also had a nice personal crutch to help me up here.”

She moved to the bed, her legs still a little shaky, and watched Raina, who was scanning the interior.  The books were expected, possibly a few of the other items were not.  But Raina’s eyes kept shifting to hers, as if, perhaps, she was the most unexpected item of all.

“Do you want to…” Berdine placed her hand on her bed beside her.  “To stay, for a while?  Just keep me company.  I’m not likely to get up to much any time soon.”  Even little movements were wearing.  Honestly, getting the Breath of Life would probably have been better.  Even though it was never fun to see the Keeper, at least she wouldn’t have felt like shit.  But she knew she would feel even worse if she were alone.

Raina looked at the place indicated and then at herself.  “I’m still covered in your blood.”

“As it’s my blood, most of which is still on me, I’m pretty certain that you’re not going to be the cause of these sheets being burned.”

Raina hesitantly lowered herself to sit.  Berdine leaned close to her shoulder.  “You could just take the leathers off,” she murmured.  Raina’s shoulders tensed, but she didn’t run, and when Berdine’s lips brushed her ear, she relaxed again.

“I don’t trust you.”  Raina looked at her, glancing down at her leg and shaking her head.  “I should have cauterized that sooner.”

“I like it when you kill me with your kisses.”  Raina gave her a look, with a wry twist of her lips and a raised eyebrow.  Berdine laughed.  “Fine, that was so below my usual standard.”

“It really was.”  Raina leaned in, her warm breath against Berdine’s ear.  “Huc est mens deducta tua mea,” she said softly, _this is where you lead my mind_ , the words falling like dewdrops from her tongue.  Berdine couldn’t breathe.  She couldn’t even believe it.  If she hadn’t been in so much pain she would have been sure it was a fantasy.  “Culpa atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo.”   _It's because of you that it has destroyed itself._

“Ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias,” Berdine couldn’t keep herself from adding the next line, the one that burned.   _So that now I cannot wish you well, if you are perfect._

Raina smiled and finished it.  “Nec desistere amare, omnia si facias.”   _Nor stop loving you, if you do all bad things._

Berdine felt like a fool, smiling helplessly, her head empty of thought and as slow as cotton.

Raina cupped her jaw and drew her in.  The kisses were warm and easy, and nothing that a Mord’Sith would ever do.  She released her and Berdine looked at her, and wondered.

“Can I… take out your braid?”

Raina blinked.  She touched her hair.  “If you want.”

Berdine did.  It was a long slow processes, unwinding the strands, and combing her fingers through the thick black locks, leaning in and pressing a kiss to the back of her head.  She pressed her face into it, feeling the waves, the sleek thickness, and Raina let out a soft breath, not a moan, but a release of some kind.

“I don’t know how to do this.”

“You think I do?”

And then she turned, and Berdine tangled her fingers in her hair and kissed her slowly.  They sank down, stretching out, letting their legs tangle together.  Berdine lay back, letting Raina move on top of her, and relaxed, still dizzy and weak enough to fall asleep.

She awoke late, alone in bloodstained sheets, and could not tell if it had been a fevered dream.  But in the bath, she turned, catching sight of her back in an angled mirror, and froze to see Raina’s name cut into her skin.

 

 _And_ this _is where my mind is led to, Lesbia,_

_It’s your fault,_

_By its duty it has thus destroyed itself._

_So that now I am neither able to wish you well,_

_if you are made perfect,_

_Nor stop loving you,_

_if you do everyone._


	11. Poem 6

“That little slut from the mountains came out of your room this morning.”  Hally’s voice was sharp, and Cara looked up, curious and suspicious.  Berdine did everything she could not to react.  “Everyone’s talking about it.”

“She was helping me with my work.”

Hally snorted. “Helping you, like the way you help her by hanging around the training grounds whenever she’s teaching and looking like an abused puppy.  She does her work, but she’s worthless at yours.  You aren’t doing her any favors by pretending she’s ‘helping.’  Just admit you’re fucking her and be done with it.  Take her as your pet, beat the shit out of her in public, and then the rumors will stop.”

“Shut up!” Berdine hissed.  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know people are saying that you’re in love with her, that you’re spending so much time with your legs spread in the library, that you’re going to undermine the Lord Rahl with not doing your work.”

“People are saying that’s she’s a traitor and she’s enchanted you,” added Cara, quietly.  “People are saying that they ought to kill her.”

“She’s illiterate.  She’s not helping you.  And you’re only going to get her killed if you keep saying she is.  Is that what you want?  Because if it is, fine, but you’ve got to pay more attention.”

Berdine looked into Hally’s eyes.  “You don’t know.  She cut her name into my back last night.”

“She…” Hally stared, confused.  “What does that-”

But Cara’s eyes were wide and horrified.  “What have you _done_ , Berdine?”

Berdine shut her lips.  It wasn’t any of their business.  And she had to go.

***

She caught up too late.  The posse of Mord’Sith had caught Raina in the dim hallway, but they hadn’t won.  Three of them were sprawled on the floor, one looked dead, and Raina had the fourth pressed against the wall, hand on her throat, almost like a confessor, except with her fingers flexed tight, choking the breath out of her.  Berdine stepped back into the shadows.  They didn’t need to know she was there.

But even the quietest step was audible to someone burning with adrenaline.  Raina’s fingers clenched, and her opponent’s eyes rolled back in her head before she slumped to the floor.  Raina turned.  Her face was bloody, her eyes on fire.

“You’re beautiful.”

Raina looked at her, looked, her eyes like a predator’s eyes, but one that knew it was trapped and could not fight.  Then she scowled, her face darkening.  She strode forward.  A knuckle strike to the cheek and Berdine’s head whipped around.  Then she caught her collar, dragging her down.  Berdine dropped to her knees and tilted her head up.  Raina claimed her lips.

“Come!”  She jerked her forward, pulled her towards Berdine’s own room.  She pushed her down on her bed, climbing on top of her, hovering.  “You want this, don’t you?”

Of course.  Of _course_.  Berdine nodded.

Raina stroked her cheek with her palm.  It left a streak of blood, someone else’s blood.  Berdine couldn’t help her overactive mind from analyzing this.  There was nothing like the power of taking someone’s life, nothing that could compare.  It brought pleasure, sometimes to the point of madness, and it brought lust.  Perhaps it was the one thing that made Berdine a ‘normal’ Mord’Sith, that she could not help her own response in the face of blood-pleasure.  And it had always been that potential for power in Raina that had acted as a magnetic sort of lure.

Berdine cupped the hand, drawing it over the mouth and licking the blood from it like a cat.  Raina’s eyes widened, and then she smiled, dipping down to kiss the remaining streaks from her lips.

***

Nails and teeth had marked and bled her body, and Berdine lay lazily in the sheets, enjoying the lingering ache.  Raina, beside her, leaned on her elbow, eyes scanning across her handiwork, stopping occasionally to contemplate a crescent cut, or a half-hard nipple. She looked pensive and serious, and Berdine thought it probably wasn’t regret, but was slightly anxious either way.

 “I know there’s something wrong with me.  I’ve always known.”  Raina’s words were soft, and she looked away, as if Berdine’s long form was harsh evidence of the fact.  Maybe it was.  “I’ve always tried to be a true Mord’Sith, to be the best and strongest that I could, even with my weaknesses.  I didn’t know that this was a weakness of mine, but perhaps I always feared it.”

Berdine moved towards her, but she wouldn’t let her touch.

“I have always fought, since I was just taken, to be better than I was.  I wanted to be broken, I desired it.  I wanted my mistress to love me.  I wanted someone to love me.  Save that, I wanted someone to respect me, and that desire left me vulnerable.”

Berdine wanted to repeat her refrain, that there was no one more worthy of respect than she was, but she knew a story when she heard one, and Raina’s voice had fallen into that soft cadence that meant a tale had been worried over enough times that its emotional impact to the speaker had been muted and blunted.  It didn’t mean it would be muted for the listener.

“My Mistress found the best way of breaking me after the torture was over.  She revealed my weaknesses to the other Mord’Sith.  Everyone in my temple, everyone who had even spoken to someone from my temple, everyone but _you_ knew I couldn’t read.”  Her eyes flashed dark and sort of amused at Berdine for being so far above the vicious little ranking struggles that she hadn’t even bothered to learn the gossip.  “There were other things too.  Everyone knew that I begged for her to fuck me.  Of course I had.  She had broken me, and I would have done anything to know I pleased her.  I was tight and eager, that I was _unnatural_ since I had no desire for men.”  Berdine barely repressed a snort of annoyance.  _Unnatural_ , honestly?  In a temple full of only women whose society was women, who cared as little for men as they did for cattle, it was unnatural to have no desire for men?

 “I had to walk around every day and hear them laugh at me and mock me.  All I had wanted was their respect, and it was exactly that which my mistress denied me.  I went to her, I screamed and begged and raged at her for doing this to me, and she laughed.  She reached out and caught me, and pulled me in to kiss me… to own me.  And I jerked away from her, I tried to beat her off, and she just caught my wrists and pinned me down and tied me.  She had one of her soldier pets take me, and then another, and then two at once.  Then she put her agiel in me and made me taste it.  She said, ‘I needed you to hate me.  I could never break you unless you hate me.’  Then she took me until I broke.  I was a whimpering mess.  The agiel burns lasted months.  All my weaknesses were laid bare, and I could not recover from them.  So she curled her arms around me and told me that she loved me.  I had never hated her more, and I had never felt more powerful.  I hated her, so I loved her more.  How else could I retain my own strength?”

“I’ll kill her.”

Raina stared at her, sitting up, sheets falling from her dusky shoulders.  “For my _honor_?  Don’t you even think it.  I learned what breaking could be that day.  I learned that my students had to hate me.  I would never let up, never show weakness, never give them rest or respite, until they burned with anger, and then I would destroy them, and they would be better for it.  But I would never break them with words.  Because she broke me before she hurt me, before she gave me to her boys.  She broke me with shame, and with mocking laughter.  I never wanted to be weak enough to suffer that again.”  She shook her head.  “You make me weak.  You open me up to injury.”

“Words have no power.”

Raina barked out an incredulous laugh.  “You, _you_ , tell me this?  You who has built her life on words, you who have been corrupted by them, you who say that with these words you can see things that you have never experienced, learn truths you could never discover, cross distances to worlds that do not even exist?  You’re telling me that words have no power?”

Berdine caught her shoulders, hauling her in, pushing her down and moving over her.  She pressed a brief kiss on the skin by her ear, and then bit the rim.  “I’m telling you that words are manipulable, that your words are just as powerful as anyone else’s.  And you’re right, I have made my living by words.”  She smiled.  “Aren’t you lucky that I’m on your side?”

Raina stared up at her.  “I don’t trust you.”

Berdine smiled wickedly, flashing her teeth.  “That’s because you’re smart.”

 

_Flavius, about your darling, to Catullus_

_unless she were clumsy and unrefined_

_you would want to speak, nor would you be able to shut up_

_In truth, I don’t know what sort of feverish_

_slut you have chosen.  You are ashamed to admit it._

_But your silence is in vain,_

_your bed cries out, garlanded and stinking of Syrian oil,_

_that you don’t lie down for lonely nights,_

_and your pillow is equally worn out by overuse,_

_and your couch, trembling and shaking,_

_creaks and moves about._

_Stand firm there!  No reason to be silent._

_Why? You wouldn’t show off your fucked-out ass so much,_

_if you weren’t doing something stupid._

_Hence, whatever you have, good and bad,_

_tell it to us.  I want to call you and your love_

_to the sky in my witty verse._


	12. Poem 86

It was time.  In the middle of the devotions yard, Berdine caught Cara’s shoulder and pointed Raina out.

“That’s her.”

Looking bewildered, Cara glanced around as if she was trying to figure out what on earth Berdine meant.  Then her eyes settled on the correct brown-leather clad form and her jaw dropped as she worked it out.  “ _That’s_ her?  Honestly?”

“Yes.”

“But she’s _tiny_.  She’s smaller than…”  Cara stopped.  Berdine eyed her and considered exactly how much the knot at the top of Cara’s braid sat below her usual line of vision.

“Smaller than _you_?”

Cara glared.  “Shut up.”

“Look, she might be petite, but she’s Mord’Sith.”  There was no doubting that, not after seeing the lust that welled up in her eyes after choking the breath out of a comrade.  “I’d even say she’s more of a Mord’Sith than you.”

Cara’s jaw dropped.  She glared at Berdine, then looked at the girl standing over by the shrine, small and dark and stiffly casual, then back to Berdine.  You did not challenge Cara on being a _real_ Mord’Sith.  It had started out as a worrying psychosis, but now it was mostly a joke.  Still it was good to see that the goad was as effective as Berdine had expected.  Cara shoved her way through the gathered Mord’Sith as they grouped into gossiping circles, waiting, bored, for devotions to begin, and marched right up to Raina.  Barely repressing her amusement, Berdine hurried after her.  This wasn’t going to go well, but it was going to be hilarious.

“Mistress Berdine claims that you are more of a Mord’Sith than I am,” Cara said stiffly.  Raina blinked, jolting slightly at the name.  She turned, staring at Cara with blank lack-of-recognition in her expression.  Then she spotted Berdine coming up behind her and flinched.

“Sorry, what did… _Mistress_ Berdine say?”  _This time_ , was an unvoiced corollary.

 Cara choked, not wanting to repeat the shameful words.

“I said you were a better Mord’Sith than she was,” Berdine chimed in helpfully.

Cara flushed with some combination of anger and embarrassment.  “I cannot let that go unchallenged.”

Raina considered this and gestured towards Berdine with a questioning eyebrow raised.  “She was the one who insulted you.  Why don’t you challenge her?”

Cara looked shifty, and Berdine grinned.  Raina rolled her eyes when she finally realized what it meant.  “She’s already beaten you.  Honestly, if Mistress _Berdine_ can beat you, I don't see why I should bother.”

Cara was shocked and looked at Berdine.  “Are you going to accept that?”

“Avenge my honor,” Berdine said, still amused.

***

Cara was small, and she had compensated for it by becoming as strong as she possibly could.  But she had never battled someone smaller than her before.  Raina used her size to her advantage.  She was a whirlwind, all speed and unpredictable twists and turns, impossible to hit.

Berdine leaned on the edge of the arena to watch.  It was different than watching Raina train her students.  Cara wasn’t raw; she didn’t make mistakes.  But as they moved, engaging for a moment, agiels cracking against each other like whips, Raina watched Cara, with the eyes that saw everything, and learned all her strengths and all her weaknesses.  

Of course the most obvious weakness was that Cara had all the finesse of a blunt instrument.  It made her amusing to talk to and brutal against the helpless, but it gave her no advantage in this.

The blows were light, teasing, as they engaged, testing the power, testing the reach.  Cara struck, and struck, and struck again, almost connecting, then connecting, Raina stumbling back, silent, a spray of sand flying up under her slipping feet.  Then Cara redoubled, and Raina was gone, slithering past the strike and delivering a soft burn to the seam of her corset.  Cara jerked back and spun to face her, suddenly wary.  They matched each other’s pacing, moving in a cautious circle.

Raina closed the distance.  She brought back her hand.  Berdine leaned forward.  Was she telegraphing the strike?  Cara spotted it as well and lunged to take advantage of it, lunged straight into an elbow to the face.  An agiel was planted in her gut, and with barely a touch to the back of her head, Cara was flat on her stomach in the dirt.  Raina placed a foot delicately on her shoulder.  “You would do better to learn to move with another’s attack, not just counter it with brute force.”

“Yes, mistress,” Cara mumbled into the dirt.

“I’ll train you.”  Raina gave her a light kick.  “I cannot allow you to add to the evidence that those of small stature are poor fighters.”

“Thank you, mistress.”

Berdine smiled.  Raina looked up at her and arched an eyebrow.  Berdine shrugged.  She had won.  Clearly no one could doubt who was the superior Mord’Sith there.

***

Nothing was ever really secret, not in a Mord’Sith temple.  A hundred things were mistaken or misinterpreted or ignored, but there were no secrets.  And the whole temple had seen the challenge being laid.  No one was unapprised of the result.

Cara was considered one of the better, if not the best, of the younger fighters at the People’s Palace.  When word got around that Mistress Raina of the Mountain temple had beaten her in the ring and was now training her, a lot of the hierarchies and betting pools had been overturned.  Mistress Raina was now rated more highly, and the evidence of those who had been beaten and revived in the hallway was taken more seriously.

“A dark horse,” someone said, amused by the accuracy of the term, and the whispers changed.  Perhaps Mistress Berdine had noticed something they hadn’t.  That would be just like Mistress Berdine.

And Mistress Berdine smiled at hearing the rumors.  That was one battle of words that she had won.

***

Raina accosted her in the library, like the first time.  She was pleased and eager.  All of the fear and cringing self-doubt usually haunting her dark eyes washed away.  Some of her students had informed her that long standing bets had finally paid off now that the new (unofficial) rankings were in.  Berdine laughed at hearing it, and took pride in being somewhat responsible.  And for a few key moments, she was too distracted by the pleasure of seeing Raina flushed with confidence to notice that she was being tied to a chair.

“You always seem to like me better when my hands are tied.”

Raina sat across Berdine’s lap, admiring her handiwork and tugging at the ropes that wound around her wrists and through the spokes in the seat back.  “If only I could chain your tongue as well,” she remarked dryly.

“Oh you wouldn’t want to do that!” Berdine protested.  “I speak eighteen languages.  And some of them have very interesting… consonants.”

Raina shook her head.  “You’re impossible.”  She cuffed her across the face with the back of her hand.

Berdine laughed and licked up the blood that welled up at the corner of her mouth.  “What can I say-“

But Raina cut her words off with a hot open-mouthed press of lips.  When she pulled away, Berdine had forgotten how to breathe.  Raina looked down at her, a dark strand of hair, having escaped her braid, brushed against Berdine’s cheek.

“I like it,” she said softly, “when I kiss you, that you kiss me back.”

***

“Mistress Berdine.”  A tall woman with a flame-red braid was addressing her.  Berdine eyed her without recognition.  She nodded slightly.

“Mistress.”

The woman smiled, a tight smile with a slightly feral cast.  One of the mad ones, Berdine thought, though madness and Mord’Sith went together like red meat and D’Haran wine.

“You don’t even know my name, and yet you think you have the right to play games with my pet.”

Berdine’s gaze sharpened.  Raina’s Mistress?  Ugliness twisted in her gut.  It was not so long ago that she had sat and listened as this woman took her fill.  But this was what she had wanted.  Her plans were unfolding as if they running downhill on a rail.  The woman’s flame-red hair was familiar now, from the meetings with Rahl.  Meditatively, Berdine examined her face.  Had it been the rumors about Raina spending her nights out of the barracks that had precipitated this?  No.  It had been the shift in the rankings.  Was the pet starting to catch up to the mistress?  

“Well, clearly it was not my right to beg an introduction,” she replied, with syrupy sarcasm.  It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the name.  She wasn’t unprepared.  It was Sinnach, Keltish for Fox, which was apt.

“No.  It wasn’t.”

“Mistress Raina is a good soldier.”

“Yes, she is.”  Mistress Sinnach’s eyes were narrow and her gaze lazy as a snake ready to strike.  “I have plans for her.  I don’t approve of your interfering in them.”

Plans like whoring her out to the Lord Rahl?  Berdine refrained from asking that question, she would spit it like venom, and it would reveal far too much of her own self-interest.  “I think most of us from the People’s Palace haven’t liked what we’ve seen of your plans.”

Mistress Sinnach’s expression turned ugly.  “And are you planning to do something about them, Mistress of Words?”

“If you want.”

“What I want is for you to leave my pet alone.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You had _better_ , or you’d better _fight!_ ”  With that she struck out, and Berdine caught her wrist, halting her.

“Fine.  I’ll fight you.”  She twisted her wrist viciously.  “For her.  _If_ she agrees.”

***

There are no secrets in the People’s Palace, and Raina had been caught by a group of her Mistress’ sycophants.  She had had to brazen through their taunts, their scolding her for being faithless and whorish, for seeking out a new Mistress, for choosing the _librarian’s_ company “when you could have had the Lord _Rahl_ ,” and it had been too much.  She turned her rage at Berdine, for allowing this to happen, even though it had to happen.  The rumors could not be stopped, only led down a different path.

“Why did you say that?  Why did you _accept_?”

Berdine could see the strain on her face, the desperation.  Raina knew it was wrong to be claimed as a pet, just as much as Berdine did.  Her anger made her beautiful.  She was never not beautiful.  Berdine reached out and caught her cheek, cupping it in a firm hand and leaning in, licking her way into the mouth, and catching her lower lip between her teeth.

“Perhaps,” she said softly, after releasing the kiss.  “Perhaps I want you to be only mine.”

There was a moment where Raina did not react, perhaps made longer by expectation, and then the blow came sudden and strong, out of nowhere, and cracked into Berdine’s jaw, sending her reeling.  

“How dare you!  How dare you try to steal my pride, my _honor_?”

The second shot was a knee to the gut, making her double over, her breath lost, and then a hammer-fist to the back of her neck, sending her to the floor, to her knees.  She bent over them, putting her forehead to the floor, like she would during her devotions, and whispered.

 “I submit.”

She had not tried to fight back, and Raina was standing over her, fists clenched, and frustrated, involuntary tears leaving tracks down her face.

“ _Why_?  Why do you submit to me?”

Berdine had no response.

***

“Good Morning, Mistress.”

My darling Raina.”  The fox-haired woman reached out and caressed her cheek.  “I have not seen you for far too long.”

“I have heard that you have been making challenges to my pet.”

Mistress Sinnach’s eyebrows arched together in momentary surprise.  “Do you tell me that the renowned Mistress Berdine is truly _your_ pet?”

“Why would you question me?  I have bound her and trained her.  She knows my agiel as well as I know yours.”

There were gasps of surprise amongst the surrounding Mord’Sith.  Any pretense of disinterest was forgotten.  Not just anyone would dare to train Mistress Berdine, and this foolish hick from the mountains had done it?  But it was Cara who caught Berdine’s arm, fiercely tugging her back into an alcove.

“What are you doing, Berdine?”

“She only told the truth.”

“If she trained you, it’s because you _let_ her.”  Cara was fierce, but she could not understand.

“That’s my business.”

“She’s going to challenge her mistress.”

“I believe she will win.  Don’t you?”

The fox-woman was speaking again.  “But am I not your mistress?  What’s yours by rights belongs to me.”

“Not her.”

Berdine let the warmth of the words flow through her.  They were like poetry.  Cara gave her a sullen glare.

“I know that smile.  You’re playing a game.”

“I’m playing to win.”

“Win _what_?”

“Freedom,” Berdine said softly.  “The only thing worth fighting for.”

The fox-haired woman’s face twisted in scorn.  “You dare deny me?”

“I must.”

Mistress Sinnach lashed out, but Raina dropped under the blow, sweeping out her leg and knocking her off balance.  Her Mistress recovered, and readied herself, pulling out her agiel.  And then the battle began in earnest.

It was a fury that enveloped the floor, that rose to a furor.  Mistress Sinnach was experienced, she was an older Mord’Sith, one of the ones who had survived.  And she had survived in madness and savagery, like so many of them did.  She took pleasure in the power of her strikes, and Raina was like a leaf, battered by the wind.  Berdine could not bear to watch, but could not bear to look away.  But then Cara, standing beside her, hissed in a breath.  “Do you see it?”

“What?”  Her eyes dropped to Raina’s feet, the light weaving pattern she was making on the floor, each time a blow seemed to connect, she was already moving, already had shifted.  “Oh.”

And then she closed the distance, and, like she taught, it was over in a moment.

Raina’s Mistress was on the floor and not getting up.  The gathered Mord’Sith were watching silently.  Berdine felt eyes flicking to her, but she didn’t move.  It wasn’t her place.  She waited.  Raina looked over, meeting her eyes.  They were hot and hungry and furious, and Berdine bowed her head.  It was fine, she tried to project, anything was fine.  This was her choice.  She could abandon her, ignore her.  It was nothing she could blame her for.

And then Raina’s hand was on her throat, forcing her down to her knees.  Berdine resisted for a moment, surprised, and then bent, kneeling in submission.

“How dare you make me fight for you?”

“I’m sorry, Mistress.”  Raina struck her across the face.

“You are my pet, you make no claims on me!”

Raina jerked open the laces at the back of her neck, dragging it open.  Berdine stiffened as her back was revealed, and Raina repressed a small gasp.  The marks she had left, scabbing over, already healing, had been reopened, packed with acid and salt, until they were raised red scars.

The Mord’Sith read the name written on Berdine’s back, and they accepted it.  And that was all they had to know.

(Raina, on the other hand, when they were in private, proceeded to slap her multiple times, and yell at her, and generally inquire why she had done such a disgusting thing to her back.  Berdine didn’t really try to defend herself, just laughed, backing up, and dropped onto the bed.

“I didn’t want it to just fade away.”

“I hate you,” Raina said, and kissed her.)

 

_Quintia is beautiful to many.  To me she is fair, tall_

_and straight: This I thus alone concede._

_But beautiful? I deny it: for nothing is made attractive,_

_when in the body there is not even an iota of wit._

_Lesbia is beautiful.  She is not only the most beautiful of all,_

_but she has also stolen every other woman’s charms._


	13. Poem 5

Raina let out a long pained moan as her body, small and muscular, moved on the thin leather mat, back arching, head tilting back.  Her skin was flame hot, even exposed to the chill night air.  Berdine pressed a quick kiss to her neck, under her ear, and felt the quiver as Raina came to release.  Raina tugged on her braid until she leaned down close enough to be kissed.

“No blood,” she said softly.

Berdine nodded.  Her lover was never anything but fierce, yet this time it had started with lazy touches as Berdine had finished her watch and slipped into the bedroll, fingers questing under leather, gentle nips and long wet kisses.  It was unlike anything Berdine had experienced before, but she had done her best to return the favor.

“I…”  She sighed.  “I have been broken by you, and you will not claim me.”

“I have been broken as many times by you.”

“Then you are mine,” Raina said briefly, but firmly.  “And I belong just as much to you.”

“I will claim you.”  Berdine nuzzled into her cheek.  “You are mine.  And I belong to you.”

Raina bit her lip, her expression worried, but still determined.  She leaned in, biting lightly at Berdine’s cheek.  Berdine nipped hers in return, and the tension faded away.

“White leather tomorrow?” Berdine asked softly.

“Unless you wish to shame me.”

“I will never wish to shame my mate.”

“Good.”  Raina curled around her fiercely and protected her with the heat of her body.

***

After the fight with Sinnach the rumor made its way around the temple and most of the city that Mistress Berdine had taken one of the Mord’Sith from the Mountain temple as her mate.  Laughter and cruel comments were the norm.  Cara and Hally moaned enough about it in private, but they had the right, since they drove the noses of anyone they heard talking about it into the dirt.

Cara just couldn’t understand why on earth one would ever take a mate, and wrinkled her nose as if she smelt something bad whenever she thought of it.  “How can you be so comfortable?  If she’s a Mord’Sith you can’t trust her, and if she isn’t, she isn’t worth wanting.”

Berdine had just smirked at this, mainly because Cara was still sporting a rather emphatic black eye as a result of Raina’s training.  “I think you’re jealous.”

Cara scowled, and slouched next to her, until Raina came in.  Then she straightened nervously.  “Mistress,” she greeted her, abjectly.  Berdine cuffed her head.

The Lord Rahl seemed rather amused by the whole thing.  “Really, Berdine?  Wasting your white leather on a female?”  He stood with his pelvis outthrust as if to demonstrate the better option.

Berdine schooled her expression to not appear utterly disgusted by him.  She faked a smile.  “I believe your ancestress, the Lady Morrigan Rahl, took a woman as her mate, a Mord’Sith, if I have not misread the texts.”  Berdine never misread the texts.

Lord Rahl looked annoyed.  “That story is apocryphal.”

“The wizard Verm has extensive quotations of their letters in his work On Res Historica.”

Berdine probably shouldn’t have pushed it.  She was certain it was his offense at her disputing his words that was behind Raina being promoted to head of the Basilisk squadron and sent on quite a few long, risky journeys.

But she came back, confident and successful, with a sly grin and a warm gaze for no one else.  And Berdine was satisfied with that, for now.

***

“What are you reading?”

Berdine glanced up from her book.  Raina dropped her sack of supplies inside the door and started unfastening her neck guard, greeting her with an easy smile.  “Love poetry,” Berdine said wryly.

Raina laughed, dropping the guard on her sack and moving to sit on the bed so Berdine could unfasten the lacings on the back of her dusty, battle worn leathers.  “Incorrigible.”

When her leathers had been stripped off, she leaned back, resting her head on Berdine’s shoulder.  Berdine traced her nails through her hair, absently loosening the braid.  Raina sighed, nuzzling into her.  “Read to me?”

“Certainly.”

Berdine read, but before she had finished a page, she heard Raina’s breathing level out and the soft whistling from her nose that indicated she was asleep.  She smiled, running her thumb along sleek hair, and, unashamed, kissed the top of her head gently.

“Sleep well, my darling.”

***

_Let us live, my dear, and let us love,_

_And let us count all the whispers of severe old men_

_As worth a single penny!_

_The suns can rise and retire:_

_For us, the occasions of light come but briefly,_

_And night is one perpetual sleep._

_So give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred,_

_Then another thousand, then a second hundred,_

_And then another thousand more, then another hundred,_

_Then, when we have made so many thousands,_

_Let us confound them, so that not even we know,_

_Nor can anyone who envies us do us evil,_

_By knowing the number of our kisses._

 


End file.
